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Sunday, July 27, 2025

T&T ranking improves on corruption index

by

2712 days ago
20180223
Dion Abdool Chairman of Trinidad and Tobago Transparency Institute reads the Corruption Perceptions Index Report at the Trinidad and Tobago Transparency Institute Enough! Stop Corruption Now Launch of the Corruption Perceptions Index at the Arthur Lok Jack Graduate School of Business in Mt. Hope yesterday.

Dion Abdool Chairman of Trinidad and Tobago Transparency Institute reads the Corruption Perceptions Index Report at the Trinidad and Tobago Transparency Institute Enough! Stop Corruption Now Launch of the Corruption Perceptions Index at the Arthur Lok Jack Graduate School of Business in Mt. Hope yesterday.

ANISTO ALVES

nadaleen.singh@guardian.co.tt

T&T has im­proved in its rank­ing on the Cor­rup­tion Per­cep­tion In­dex (CPI), mov­ing from 101 in 2016, to 77 in 2017.

The coun­try record­ed a score of 41 to go with its im­proved rank­ing.

While 41 shows the need for T&T to still im­prove its CPI score, this is an im­prove­ment from its 2016 score of 35 and rank­ing of 101.

A ze­ro scor­ing means that the par­tic­u­lar coun­try is high­ly cor­rupt­ed.

Look­ing at the per­for­mance of oth­er coun­tries in the re­gion,, Guyana scored 38 and ranked 91,Ja­maica scored 44 and ranked 68 and Bar­ba­dos scored 68 with a rank­ing of 25.

Com­ment­ing on T&T's po­si­tion, David West, di­rec­tor of the Po­lice Com­plaints Au­thor­i­ty (PCA) said he was hap­py to see that T&T had moved up a cou­ple notch­es on the CPI.

He sug­gest­ed that T&T should im­ple­ment an an­ti-cor­rup­tion agency like Ja­maica did.

"I want to see us (T&T) go the way of Ja­maica, where they ac­tu­al­ly have an an­ti-cor­rup­tion agency. I think that is some­thing that we should be push­ing to al­low us to in­ves­ti­gate and pros­e­cute" West said, in an in­ter­view at the launch of CPI 2018 which was held yes­ter­day at the Arthur Lok Jack Grad­u­ate School of Busi­ness, Mt Hope.

West, said, "this in­sti­tu­tion (the an­ti-cor­rup­tion agency) would be able to pros­e­cute for cor­rupt prac­tice of pub­lic of­fi­cials, so I think that would be a step for­ward."

Com­ment­ing on the re­sults, an­ti-cor­rup­tion ac­tivist Afra Ray­mond said there were new met­rics added to the scor­ing and the in­clu­sion of those met­rics as­sist­ed T&T to im­prove its score.

"Of course scor­ing 41 is less than 50 so it is a fail­ing mark. We have a lot of room to work for im­prove­ment. We've had the ap­point­ment of a pro­cure­ment board, which is an im­por­tant de­vel­op­ment. We now have to in­sist that the pro­cure­ment board let us know when they have com­plet­ed their reg­u­la­tions and when they would be im­ple­ment­ing the sys­tem ful­ly."

Ray­mond added that in­sti­tu­tions such as the of­fice of the Di­rec­tor of Pub­lic Pros­e­cu­tions, the In­tegri­ty Com­mis­sion and the Pro­cure­ment board need­ed to be more ac­count­able to the pub­lic, sug­gest­ing that this be done through Par­lia­ment.

"I be­lieve that there should be a prop­er chan­nel. A pro­ce­dure needs to be de­vel­oped for those im­por­tant in­de­pen­dent in­sti­tu­tions, a pro­to­col where they re­port to the pub­lic what is hap­pen­ing like re­port­ing to the Par­lia­ment on a rou­tine ba­sis."


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