KEMO
CHAM in Freetown
In a room within the first floor of the headquarters
of the Sierra Leone National Lottery Company, the telephone lines are unusually
busy.
A young lady, aided by a male colleague seated
opposite her across a desk of computers, is busy receiving calls from anonymous
callers.
This is part of a pioneering initiative dubbed ‘Pay
No Bribe’ campaign, the latest approach by the Sierra Leone government in its crusade
against bribery, considered the most prevalent form of graft in the country.
The callers are guided through a set of three main
questions: has a government official demanded bribe while they seek a public
service; did they pat the bribe; or did they meet an honest person who didn’t
demand bribe.
Anti Corruption Commission (ACC) officials say various
studies have pointed to petty corruption, prevalent in the public sector, as having
the most profound effect on the livelihoods of the masses, depriving them of
much needed and sometimes lifesaving services.
Six government Ministries, Departments and Agencies
(MDAs), covering the crucial sectors of health, education, security, water, and
electricity, are being piloted under the PNB, an innovative reporting platform
that collects real time data through three sources. The toll-free line [515] is
just one.
The system is designed to let anyone report with
ease and anonymity. This, say the ACC, will allow people to even report against
their own relatives or friends.
Citizens can also download an app on a mobile device
and report verbally. On downloading the app, an automated voice prompt leads
you through the questions.
Since it is the ordinary man that is targeted, the
project caters for the three dominant languages in the country: Krio, Mende and
Temne.
Most
corrupt institution
The idea of the PNB was inspired by the 2013 Afrobarometer
report which ranked Sierra Leone worst among 34 African countries, with two
thirds of those surveyed admitting bribing an official to get public service.
That report rated the police as the most corrupt
institution across the whole continent.
Nigeria, Kenya and Sierra Leone were rated the worst
for police corruption.
In Sierra Leone, the police have topped every
national survey on anti graft since then, including the first ever quarterly
report of the PNB, released last week.
Out of a total of 7, 027 reports recorded, covering the
months of October, November and December of 2016, 80 percent, representing 5,
602 people, reported paying a bribe. 12.5 percent (885) reported not paying a
bribe. Only 7.7 percent (540) reported meeting an honest official.
Almost half the reports - 48.7 percent – concerned
the Police. 23.2 percent concerned health officials, while 22 percent concerned
the education sector.
Calls concerning electricity and water sector
officials were 4.6 percent and 1.3 percent respectively.
There were other interesting statistics drawn from
the report. Example, it was found that men are 10 percent more likely to pay a
bribe than women. The men are almost six times more likely than women to pay a
bribe to the Police, whereas women are four times more likely to pay a bribe
than men for health services.
In the education sector girls (47%) reported
slightly less bribery than boys (53%). In terms of public utilities, men are
more likely to pay a bribe for electricity services and women for water.
The PNB is one of seven programmes under the
President’s Recovery Priorities (PRP),falling under the improving governance in
the public sector arm of the UK-funded post Ebola recovery initiative designed
to reposition the country to its pre-Ebola economic growth trajectory.
The PRP is chaired by Presidential Chief of Staff,
Saidu Conton Sesay, who laments that corruption remains a significant challenge
to Sierra Leone’s development.
“It diverts resources that should go into health
care, education and infrastructure and erodes trust in public institutions,” he
says.
Serious efforts to contain graft in Sierra Leone started
far back in 2000. Several legislative reforms have been instituted but with
little effect on the growing phenomenon which has also become an obstacle for
the country to source funding from a wary donor community.
In 2013, failure to tackle corruption was one of the
indices that cost Sierra Leone US$300m in US funding for development projects
as part of the Millennium Challenge Corporation.
Transparency International’s Corruption Perception
Index shows that Sierra Leone dropped to 123 in 2016 from 119 the previous
year.
No
prosecution
The PNB is not prosecutorial-oriented; it is designed
to be used to provide prevention measures
to map out corruption trends and allow the rolling out of targeted
interventions and provision of remedial actions. Therefore people do not report
corrupt individuals; they report a particular department.
The platform basically captures the data and trends
on corruption in the public sector, and the data is made public on a website.
The ACC also shares detailed reports on monthly
trends with relevant MDAs which use the data to address corruption at source
through administrative action or systems and policy reforms.
The idea behind the PNB, explains Nabillahi Musa
Kamara, Director of the National Anti Corruption Strategy, is that it shines a
spotlight on trends and patterns so that relevant ministries can direct their
resources more efficiently towards developing robust responses against
institutionalised corruption. He says the intention is to promote change within
institutions, rather than targeting or seeking to prosecute individuals who
take bribes.
“It captures trends, identifies hot spots and
problem areas. It looks at the big picture so that MDAs can work on creating
change from within - through training and education, as well as new systems and
policies,” says Kamara, who is also Programme Manager for the PNB.
But while the idea isn’t to prosecute individuals, the
Commission says it can use information obtained to launch sting operation on
departments which attract much attention.
Lewelyn O’Connor, a youthful computer technician, supervises
the call center. His job includes analyzing all data collected from all three reporting
sources. He tells the Africa Review that they get 100 calls a day on average.
The center is operational between the hours of 8am
and 5pm, one hour more than the official working period.
Sixty percent of the reports are received via calls,
O’Connor says, noting that the app downloads accounts for 30 percent, while
reporting via the web site is 10 percent.
Remedial
actions
While people can call from anywhere in the country,
focus is on five districts being piloted in the initiative, including the capital Freetown.
Analysis of the data collected is done weekly and
reports sent to MDAs monthly. MDAs are expected to get back to ACC within seven
days with remedial actions.
The Commission says with this approach it can be
able to direct its resources to the right area of intervention.
Already it has results to show. The police, acting
on the monthly reports, says it cracked down on 21 illegal checkpoints between
23 December 2016 and 12 January 2017. It has also instituted a regular meeting
of all crime officers and regional police commanders to formulate strategy on
tackling bribery within the traffic division, the major point of focus.
A number of other reforms have been initiated within
the other MDAs covered by the PNB campaign.
At the core of all this is the issue of transparency,
says Patrick Sandi, deputy director of education and outreach at the ACC. He says
they are working on increasing visibility of service charters across all public
institutions so that citizens can identify legitimate charges.
“We will only reduce public sector corruption when
we work together – the public by reporting when they are asked to pay bribes
and the MDAs by identifying and changing the policies and procedures which
allows corruption within their ranks to flourish.”
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