Stopping the culture of bribery and catching criminals involved in this practice is a very difficult task. Even in the USA the government found it difficult to capture people accepting bribes. During the probation period, criminal activities and bribery had become very rampant. In such a situation the police eventually captured the criminals like Al Capone by instigating them in tax fraud cases or other similar crimes.
In Pakistan anti-corruption units are operating to stop bribery. In KP, PTI’s government is strongly against bribery in government departments. But due to the difficult nature of capturing bribery incidents, PTI has not been able to stop this menace.
Take the example of a road engineer from a government department who asked his contractor to pay him Rs30,000 as bribe. The contractor made a complaint to the PTI MP who informed the anti-corruption department. The anti-corruption met with the road engineer to investigate where the road engineer explained to them that the contractor was not doing proper work and he then proceeded to show the anti-corruption team technical mistakes that the contractor had made in his work. Since the anti-corruption team or the contractor did not have any road experts, they could not investigate any issues. This eventually resulted in dismissing the corruption case.
To help reduce and end corruption in KP and Pakistan, the anti-corruption authorities have to use new or better techniques, including arresting corrupt officials on smaller charges to remove them from government offices. They can also use tracking devices, marked currency bills and video recordings to capture incidents of bribery. As no government employee can accept any payment from any supplier/contractor without giving out a receipt, any video recording of a government employee accepting payment (for any reason) can be used in bribery investigation.
ENGR SHAHRYAR KHAN BASEER
Peshawar
