Geisha Kow­lessar

T&T has slipped four points on the Cor­rup­tion Per­cep­tions In­dex (CPI), from a score of 39 in 2015 to 35 in 2016.

This was re­vealed dur­ing the launch of the Cor­rup­tion Per­cep­tions In­dex 2016 at the Arthur Lok Jack Grad­u­ate School of Busi­ness, Mt Hope yes­ter­day.

This coun­try's po­si­tion is now 101 com­pared to 72 in 2015. In 2013 and 2014, T&T had scored 38 and in 2012 the score was 39 on the CPI.

Speak­ing at the launch, JMMB man­ag­ing di­rec­tor and CEO Nigel Ro­mano called for good cor­po­rate gov­er­nance in pri­vate com­pa­nies and State en­ter­pris­es, adding that this es­sen­tial­ly pro­tect­ed the in­ter­ests of a com­pa­ny's own­ers, share­hold­ers and was re­cep­tive to re­quests.

"Com­pa­nies with poor cor­po­rate gov­er­nance make de­ci­sions that ad­verse­ly af­fect the in­ter­est of share­hold­ers. Weak cor­po­rate gov­er­nance struc­tures don't nec­es­sar­i­ly pro­duce bad de­ci­sion-mak­ing.

They mere­ly al­low it," Ro­mano said.

He added that too of­ten, man­age­ment teams abuse their po­si­tions and be­come "se­cre­tive, dic­ta­to­r­i­al and greedy."

"They treat share­hold­er mon­ey like theirs. Good cor­po­rate gov­er­nance pro­ce­dures are de­signed to pro­tect against this be­hav­iour," Ro­mano added.

He said at the na­tion­al lev­el it was im­por­tant for po­lit­i­cal lead­er­ship to en­gage all stake­hold­ers, in­clud­ing busi­ness, labour, pro­fes­sion­als, acad­e­mia, re­li­gious lead­ers and civ­il so­ci­ety, in a "very re­al con­ver­sa­tion around so­lu­tions."

"When peo­ple clear­ly un­der­stand what is ex­pect­ed of them, po­lit­i­cal jock­ey­ing and favouritism are min­imised and peo­ple can fo­cus on rapid ex­e­cu­tion," he said.

Dur­ing the pan­el dis­cus­sion, Win­ston Rud­der, a for­mer per­ma­nent sec­re­tary who said the re­sults were dis­turb­ing, said there were enough laws to deal with cor­rup­tion, but said cit­i­zens must not be­come com­pla­cent when it came to tack­ling this is­sue.

Say­ing that cor­rup­tion in T&T was some­what "de­moc­ra­tised," he said the gains of cor­rup­tion were fil­tered through­out the so­ci­ety.

He said there must be a change in at­ti­tude on the part of cit­i­zens to fight this scourge.

Trans­paren­cy In­ter­na­tion­al chair Jose Ugaz called for ur­gent deep-root­ed sys­temic re­forms that "even up."

Echo­ing his sen­ti­ments was Dion Ab­dool, chair­man of the T&T Trans­paren­cy, who said so­ci­ety need­ed to ac­cept that some­thing was wrong.