Lack of effort by officials is hampering public service delivery, finds the Anti-Corruption Commission (ACC)’s National Integrity Assessment (NIA) report for 2016.
The report also found prevalence of abuse of power, and unnecessary processes in public service delivery.
The national integrity score for 2016, which is rated out of 10, stands at 7.95, slightly lower than the previous assessment in 2012. According to the report, the number indicates very good status of integrity level in the country. However, the reports also show that Bhutan’s public service sector is riddled with transparency and accountability issues.
The report surveyed close to 9000 public service recipients, of which, more than 50 per cent were farmers. Most respondents did not agree to experiencing or being directly involved in corruption practices like giving cash, kind, sponsoring tea and meals, and showing gratification to avail public services.
However, the report show, 99.5 per cent of the respondents saw, knew, and heard of corruption practices such as these in service delivery.
“Favouritism” and “Nepotism” based on region and relationships saw the lowest score of 3.12. The report found that “having personal relationship based on friendship was most beneficial in processing services faster”.
The report states, “discrimination based on wealth, region, gender, status, etc. in service delivery are some of the common problems faced by the citizens.”
The National Integrity Assessment also surveyed over 2,000 public service providers. It showed that public officials themselves felt the existence of negligence of official duties, and favouritism in the government agencies. Ignoring official duty and favouritism scored the lowest score of 7.05 and 7.06 respectively.
The report stated, “Public officials do not report corruption due to fear of “retaliation, complacency, and misguided compassion.”
Hence, effectiveness of whistle blowing system in public offices scored only six points out of 10.
That aside, the report stated, employees in the government agencies are aware of the existence of corruption practices in their agencies. Public agencies were found most unfair in personnel management such as recruitment, training, promotion, and transfer.
While nearly 55 per cent of the respondents agreed to corruption practices being quite serious in Bhutan, 48 per cent reported decrease in corruption practices in the past five years.
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