Anti-corruption activists too give bribes

Dec 04, 2014

Civil servants have been accused of creating conditions to compel the desperate members of the public to pay for services they are entitled get free of charge.

 By Pascal Kwesiga                    

Civil servants have been accused of creating conditions to compel the desperate members of the public to pay for services they are entitled get free of charge.


Some of the people including anti-corruption activists have said they have on several occasions been compelled to offer bribes to get services in the public sector under desperate conditions.

A man asked the assistant auditor general, Keto Nyapendi, for advice on how to deal with a hypothetical scenario where a parent with an ailing baby has only two options – to pay a bribe to a health worker to attend to his baby or lose it.

“Do you pay a bribe to save your baby or let it die?” he asked.

Nyapendi had represented the auditor general, John Muwanga, at the fourth annual anti-corruption convention at Hotel Africana in Kampala. The conference was held on the theme: Fighting corruption and promoting integrity.

“That is a hard question. You don’t want your baby to die and you don’t want to encourage corruption at the same time. I can’t answer it, may be let me pass it over to the panelists (activists),” she said.

The activists who seated on the high table with Nyapendi didn’t respond to the question. When New Vision asked anti-corruption activist, Fr. Gaetano Batanyenda for his opinion, he said “I think it’s okay to offer such a bribe in desperation to save the baby’s or your wife’s life. I would give such a bribe but the blame should go to the receiver.”

But the giver and the receiver of the bribe are both culpable under the anti-corruption laws. Batanyenda however, said desperate situations are created by people (civil servants) to compel the citizenry to pay for public services.

“There is need to change the politics of the country. The problem people don’t understand the impact of corruption. In Kabale where people hear that Bishop Zac Niringiye has been arrested they say those people want power,” Batanyenda added.

Associate professor, Maximiano Ngabirano, from Uganda Martyrs University also said the gullible members of the public should not be blamed for offering bribes “under emergency situations” adding that “You can give such a bribe but the receiver should be the one to blame because they have created those conditions deliberately.”

He observed that regime change is the only solution to the widespread corruption.

“You seem to be saying that the bush war heroes are the most corrupt. Are you aware that there are corrupt individuals in the opposition? Are we not going to replace the corrupt with the corrupt?” a participant Ngabirano asked.

 

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