Ky­ron Reg­is

ky­ron.reg­is@guardian.co.tt

A new re­port from the In­ter-Amer­i­can De­vel­op­ment Bank (IDB) de­scribes gov­ern­ment trans­ac­tions in T&T and across the Caribbean as a “hotbed of cor­rup­tion” where cit­i­zens are com­pelled to pay bribes to ac­cess cer­tain ser­vices.

In the re­port, Wait no More: Cit­i­zens, Red Tape and Dig­i­tal Gov­ern­ment, au­thors Ben­jamin Roseth and An­gela Reyes state that “man­u­al gov­ern­ment trans­ac­tions, face-to-face in­ter­ac­tions, and the lack of stan­dard­ized process­es mean that trans­ac­tions are vul­ner­a­ble to dis­hon­est be­hav­iour.”

Ref­er­enc­ing da­ta from a 2019 Trans­paren­cy In­ter­na­tion­al sur­vey, they said in five Caribbean coun­tries 19 per cent of re­spon­dents said that had paid a bribe to ac­cess a pub­lic ser­vice.

“Da­ta from this same sur­vey show that the per­cent­age of peo­ple who pay bribes in ex­change for ser­vices varies through­out the re­gion: in Guyana 27 per cent of those sur­veyed said they had to pay a bribe to ac­cess a pub­lic ser­vice, the high­est pro­por­tion in the re­gion, fol­lowed by 20 per cent in The Ba­hamas and 17 per cent in both Ja­maica and Trinidad and To­ba­go.”

Bar­ba­dos reg­is­tered the low­est rate, with on­ly 9 per cent of those sur­veyed re­port­ing hav­ing paid a bribe to re­ceive a pub­lic ser­vice.

The au­thors claim that these rates var­ied ac­cord­ing to the ser­vice be­ing re­quest­ed. The re­search by Trans­paren­cy In­ter­na­tion­al found that in the Caribbean, pub­lic util­i­ties record­ed the high­est rate of bribes where 19 per cent of cit­i­zens said they paid a bribe to ac­cess a ser­vice. Al­so, 15 per cent of re­spon­dents paid a bribe to ob­tain an iden­ti­ty doc­u­ment. For po­lice ser­vices, this fig­ure reached 18 per cent.

The ref­er­ence pop­u­la­tion for these sta­tis­tics, ac­cord­ing to the re­port, in­clud­ed peo­ple who at­tempt­ed to ac­cess a pub­lic ser­vice in the past year. The sur­vey asked re­spon­dents for each type of ser­vice: “How of­ten, if ever, did you have to pay a bribe, give a gift, or do a favour to (pub­lic of­fi­cial in X in­sti­tu­tion) to get the (ser­vice X) you need­ed?”

The re­spon­dents in­clud­ed in the over­all bribery per­cent­age are those who re­spond­ed “once,” “twice,” “a few times” or “of­ten.”

When Guardian Me­dia reached out to var­i­ous of­fi­cials about their knowl­edge of peo­ple ac­cept­ing bribes, they said that they were not aware.

Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty Min­is­ter Stu­art Young said: “No I am not. If you have any cred­i­ble in­for­ma­tion on these very se­ri­ous al­le­ga­tions I would like you to pro­vide to me please.”

There was a sim­i­lar re­sponse from Pub­lic Util­i­ties Min­is­ter Robert Le Hunte.

“No I am not and if you have in­for­ma­tion on that please send it to me,” he told Guardian Me­dia

Ap­proached for com­ment, Po­lice Com­mis­sion­er Gary Grif­fith point­ed out that the T&T Po­lice Ser­vice (TTPS) does not in­ves­ti­gate based on “a Caribbean poll or al­le­ga­tions by anony­mous per­sons from around the Caribbean.”

“There have been dozens of re­ports made on TTPS po­lice of­fi­cers per­tain­ing to such in­ci­dents and with every re­port, it is thor­ough­ly in­ves­ti­gat­ed,” he said.

Grif­fith said at times the in­ves­ti­ga­tions proved the al­le­ga­tions to have no mer­it and there had been “sev­er­al in­ves­ti­ga­tions where­by po­lice of­fi­cers have in­deed been charged.”

The Com­mis­sion­er said this ev­i­dence shows that the TTPS “acts on such mat­ters if and when called up­on to do so.” He ex­plained, how­ev­er, “that the num­ber of such cas­es is very low in com­par­i­son to the num­ber of TTPS of­fi­cers on du­ty.”

Ac­cord­ing to the IDB re­port, one of the rea­sons cit­i­zens re­sort to pay­ing bribes is be­cause of the length of the trans­ac­tion times for gov­ern­ment ser­vices which Roseth and Reyes de­scribed as “slow and (they) gen­er­ate trans­ac­tion costs for both cit­i­zens and firms.”

“Com­plet­ing gov­ern­ment trans­ac­tions re­quires a lot of ef­fort. Jour­neys, queues, wait­ing at the counter, fill­ing out forms, read­ing com­mu­ni­ca­tions, seek­ing in­for­ma­tion, send­ing let­ters, or even learn­ing to use a new sys­tem or web­site: in short, a gov­ern­ment trans­ac­tion can be all-con­sum­ing,” they wrote.

The av­er­age amount of hours spent to get a trans­ac­tion com­plet­ed in T&T is 3.9 hours. Guyana had the slow­est times, where it takes a cit­i­zen on av­er­age 5.9 hours to com­plete one trans­ac­tion. Bar­ba­dos was al­so above the Caribbean av­er­age, at 4.8 hours on av­er­age, while in Ja­maica it took on av­er­age 4.1 hours. The Ba­hamas had the low­est av­er­age times of the Caribbean at 2.8 hours.

Da­ta from Trans­paren­cy In­ter­na­tion­al al­so showed that Caribbean cit­i­zens spent an av­er­age of 4.3 hours to com­plete their last gov­ern­ment trans­ac­tion and “this refers to ac­tive time, such as trans­porta­tion, wait­ing in line and at the counter, and ex­cludes time spent wait­ing for a res­o­lu­tion out­side of the pub­lic of­fice.”

Roseth and Reyes re­port­ed that mul­ti­ple in­ter­ac­tions gen­er­at­ed trans­ac­tion costs for cit­i­zens even if every in­di­vid­ual vis­it is short, “as cit­i­zens must spend time and re­sources com­mut­ing to pub­lic of­fices and ask mul­ti­ple times for leave at work, among oth­er costs.”

These mul­ti­ple in­ter­ac­tions al­so im­ply ef­fi­cien­cy loss­es for the gov­ern­ment which is forced to ear­mark more re­sources for pro­vid­ing cit­i­zen ser­vices due to in­ef­fi­cien­cy.