Military stands at number five among corrupt institutions

ISLAMABAD: Despite the arm-twisting by the corruption-plagued PPP-led coalition government, Transparency International Pakistan (TIP) will release its annual survey this year - the National Corruption Perception Survey (NCPS) 2011 - on December 28. For the first time the survey also carries the ranking of Pakistan military among the corrupt institutions, sources told The News.
The IBA Karachi, which conducted this survey in 2010 for the TIP, expressed its reluctance to do it this year and transparency has concealed the name of its contractor this year. The sources said the IBA administration, when contacted this year to conduct the National Corruption Perception Survey (NCPS 2011), had shown its reluctance for the reason that its students were harassed by the government agencies for their last year’s work.
They said though six months late, Transparency had been able to conduct the NCPS 2011 and it was releasing it on 28th of December. “The NCPS comprises the perception of levels and frequency of corruption faced in different departments by common Pakistanis on a daily basis,” the sources said, adding: “Unlike the previous surveys, this year the NCPS comprises of only basic survey report on the measure of perceptions, nature and extent of corruption being faced by consumers in 10 public sector departments”.
The sources said military stood at number five among the 10 most corrupt institutions of the country. The ranking of most corrupt departments in NCPS 2011 is given below: 1. Police; 2. Electricity Supply; 3. Health; 4. Education; 5. Military; 6. Justice / Courts; 7. Revenue / Property Registration; 8. Taxation; 9. Customs and 10. Tendering and Contracting.
It is worth mentioning here that the TIP-government relations became estranged in 2010 because the rulers were extremely displeased with the successive TIP reports showing the present PPP regime as among the most corrupt entities in the world.
Last year’s survey - NCPS 2010 - showed 70 percent of the Pakistanis perceived President Asif Ali Zardari’s government more corrupt than that of Pervez Musharraf. According to the NCPS 2010, the overall corruption in 2010 increased to an awe-inspiring level of Rs223 billion, as compared to Rs195 billion in 2009. The TIP last year, while launching the survey, had observed that the credibility of Pakistan was almost at the lowest level, which is evident from the fact that there had been no funding in the previous two years from the Friends of Pakistan fund, being managed by the World Bank.
The NCPS 2009 had shown corruption to have surged by whopping 400 percent in the last three years. The 2009 report indicated that the overall corruption in 2002 had increased from Rs45 billion to Rs195 billion in 2009.