Akash Sama­roo

Trinidad and To­ba­go’s pub­lic sec­tor is be­ing per­ceived as slight­ly less cor­rupt than it was a year be­fore.

Mov­ing from a score of 40 in 2020 to 41 in 2021 in the Cor­rup­tion Per­cep­tions In­dex (CPI), the Trinidad and To­ba­go Trans­paren­cy In­sti­tute (TT­TI) called it a good plat­form but “sta­tis­ti­cal­ly in­signif­i­cant.”

“The im­por­tant point to note is al­though there is a one-point move for Trinidad and To­ba­go, more needs to be done,” said Dion Ab­dool, TT­TI chair­man.

Ab­dool not­ed that this is far bet­ter than the score of 35 achieved in 2016 but lament­ed that this coun­try has scored be­tween 40 and 41 since then.

“We seem to be plateau­ing and we need to take de­ci­sive ac­tion to get past the pass mark of 50 or high­er. You need 50 marks to pass an ex­am and we haven’t reached there yet.”

Bar­ba­dos leads the Caribbean with a score of 65.

Ab­dool said the “de­ci­sive ac­tion” that is need­ed must come from the Red House as leg­is­la­tion that has been talked about for years should be im­ple­ment­ed im­me­di­ate­ly.

“To move from where we are we need the im­me­di­ate op­er­a­tional­i­sa­tion and im­ple­men­ta­tion of the Pub­lic Pro­cure­ment and Dis­pos­al of Pub­lic Prop­er­ty Act. We need it like yes­ter­day. We al­so call for Whis­tle Blow­er leg­is­la­tion, Cam­paign Fi­nance Leg­is­la­tion and an Open Gov­ern­ment Part­ner­ship.”

Speak­ing at the launch of the re­port yes­ter­day, At­tor­ney Gen­er­al Faris Al-Rawi sought to give an up­date on both the Pub­lic Pro­cure­ment and Cam­paign Fi­nance leg­is­la­tions.

“We have just done the 12 reg­u­la­tions to make that (Pub­lic Pro­cure­ment leg­is­la­tion) come to life, that is on­ly as good as Cam­paign Fi­nance Re­form which is com­plet­ed in terms of a bill laid in the Par­lia­ment, re­ferred to a Joint Se­lect Com­mit­tee (JSC) and will be com­plet­ed with a pas­sage of spe­cial ma­jor­i­ty con­sid­er­a­tions.”

At­tor­ney Gen­er­al Faris Al-Rawi be­lieves the main fac­tor in mov­ing this coun­try’s score to the 80s will be the Ju­di­cia­ry de­liv­er­ing by way of judge­ments, the many thou­sands of mat­ters the Trinidad and To­ba­go Po­lice Ser­vice (TTPS) brings be­fore it.

“And I am very pleased to say that the Back­log Man­age­ment Com­mit­tee chaired by the Chief Jus­tice will be mak­ing an an­nounce­ment soon as we go in­to re­veal­ing the pre­pared­ness for tri­als in spe­cial­ist courts.”

In its glob­al analy­sis, it warned “The use by some Gov­ern­ments of the COVID-19 pan­dem­ic to erode hu­man rights and democ­ra­cy could al­so lead to sharp­er de­clines across the globe in the fu­ture.”

The TT­TI said this coun­try’s 2021 score was based on da­ta from the year 2020.

Chair­man Ab­dool said this means for ex­am­ple the work of the Fi­nan­cial In­tel­li­gence Bu­reau in 2021 will on­ly be re­flect­ed in the next an­nu­al re­port.

The TT­TI be­lieves if the At­tor­ney Gen­er­al’s plans are op­er­a­tionalised it will in­crease this coun­try’s score.

Cur­rent­ly, the top spot is held by Den­mark and Swe­den (88) and the low­est So­ma­lia, Syr­ia and South Su­dan (13).

The Amer­i­c­as scored an av­er­age of 43 with the chair of Trans­paren­cy In­ter­na­tion­al, Delia Fer­reira Ru­bio say­ing, “De­ci­sive ac­tion is need­ed to re­verse this trend to pro­tect civ­il so­ci­ety, and de­fend hu­man rights and democ­ra­cy.”

This coun­try’s CPI was the re­sult of sev­en da­ta sources, each with a list of ques­tions for the pub­lic, two of them be­ing ‘Do you think bribery and cor­rup­tion ex­ist in the Pub­lic Sec­tor’ and “Do you think the Gov­ern­ment does enough to con­tain cor­rup­tion in the Pub­lic Ser­vice?”

Guardian Me­dia put the for­mer of the two ques­tions to mem­bers of the pub­lic yes­ter­day.

“Yes, be­cause I see some things that are hap­pen­ing,” said a man asked on­ly to be iden­ti­fied as Ka­reem while an­oth­er gen­tle­man quick­ly walked away say­ing, “What you think? I refuse to even an­swer that.”