Seventy percent of the total respondents surveyed in all the 58 municipalities in Nepal answered that political parties are the most corrupt followed by public service and bureaucracy (66 percent), police (58 percent), parliament (51 percent), judiciary (51 percent) and private sector (30 percent) in the top five places. Under the category, 14 percent said media is a corrupt sector.[break]
According to the study named Global Corruption Barometer (GCB) 2013, 57 percent people included in the survey in Nepal believed that cases of corruption have highly increased in the last two years. One thousand people from all the 58 municipalities across the country were queried for the survey purpose.
Likewise, 69 percent respondents believed that corruption is a serious problem in public sector, 42 percent said personal contact is important to access public services, while 67 percent believed that the government effort to fight graft is ineffective.
Asked if they knew about lodging of complaints against corruption, 61 percent responded positively whereas the remaining 43 percent said they are not aware about any institution for filing complaints and another 39 percent said they were not optimistic about any action even if complaints are lodged. Likewise, 86 percent however said that citizens have a significant role in controlling corruption.
Also, the survey revealed that 43 percent have faced some incident in life when they were asked for a bribe and 28 percent said they refused to give a bribe even when asked.
Of the total, 40 percent said that they bribed officials for getting their works done in land related services, 37 percent had paid bribes in the judicial service and 30 percent to police.
However, respondents in other 36 countries viewed police as the most corrupt, 20 countries viewed the judiciary as the most corrupt in their society, said the survey.
The GCB is a TI initiative started from 2003 and the study is carried out in 107 countries around the world. Nepal was included in the survey from 2011, with the present study being only the second edition for the country. A total of 1,000 households -- 53 percent male and 47 percent females -- from all 58 municipalities of Nepal were included in the study.
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