Corruption and Cambodian households
The World Bank worked with the Center for Social Development (CSD) in Cambodia to produce a study on the impact of corruption in Cambodia, and attitudes towards it. According to the National Poverty Reduction Strategy 2003-2005, one of the biggest problems for Cambodia’s further development is corruption: it is a threat to democratic institutions and fundamental rights and freedoms, it undermines socio-economic development and deepens poverty, it provokes irrational decision-making, disrupts the development of the private sector, and undermines the environment for sustainable development.
The CSD study, which began in November 2003, and ended in January 2005, took two forms. One was quantitative analysis, published as Corruption and Cambodian Households: Household Survey on Perceptions, Attitudes and Impact of Everyday Forms of Corrupt Practices in Cambodia. The other, a qualitative analysis, was published as Living Under the Rule of Corruption: An Analysis of Everyday Forms of Corrupt Practices in Cambodia.
These reports find that although corruption is widespread, Cambodians are reluctant to accept it as a “fact of life”. Those surveyed overwhelmingly regarded the priority action against corruption as being to rid administrations of corrupt officials. This marks a change from the CSD’s 1998 survey, in which a high number of respondents accepted corruption as the normal way of doing things and thought raising civil servants’ salaries was the way to end it.
Court, tax, customs and the police are perceived as the most dishonest institutions, along with public schools and public hospitals. Government, at all levels, is distrusted. The influence of political parties is a concern, with respondents saying they are forced to join the ruling parties to gain access to services.
The most trusted institutions are all private: NGOs, private schools, private health clinics and the pagoda.
Citizens in urban areas, the higher educated and the wealthier are more negative about many institutions than others, perhaps because wealth, education and urban location all provide greater access to institutions where corruption may be experienced.
The surveys found that the bribe required for a particular service varied little between rich and poor. Corruption effectively prices some services beyond reach of the poor.
Corrupt practices are institutionalized and paid up through a pyramid. Money flows from ordinary citizens to lower civil servants, then from them to patrons and high-ranking officials.
Schools, hospitals, and the local police station are the chief arenas where the poor routinely encounter corruption. Schools are a major transmission of cultural values. That the school system is perceived as among the most corrupt institutions teaches a negative lesson early in life. Teachers possess power as the gatekeepers of education, knowledge, and qualification. Corruption in the education system services as an illustration of the general problem:
Corruption payments are made when a child is enrolled in school, and when students have tests to sit: payment may influence marks. Teachers sell snacks and drinks that parents feel obliged to have their children buy to avoid discrimination. And teachers supplement their income by covering the official curriculum in private lessons after school hours. Annual corrupt payments per child range from $3 in a remote rural area to $44.50 in an urban area.
Teachers, in turn, make corrupt payments to enroll in the teacher training school and pass its exams, and between $300 and $500 (about a year’s salary) to the Department of Education to get a job after graduation at a desirable school (one close to family, or one in an urban and potentially more lucrative area), or transfer to such a school. Teachers also pay for promotion.
Among numerous recommendations of a CSD workshop in November 2004:
Strengthen the enforcement of laws at all levels of society and apply them equally to all; adopt an anti-corruption law; publish official budgets and documents; foster public committee to deal with corruption; strengthen official procedures to make informal methods more difficult; pay civil servants on time, increase their salaries and require them to declare their assets; and have civil society organizations monitor civil activities.
(Source: World Bank Group in Cambodia: Working for a Cambodia Free of Poverty, 2005)