DAKAR (AlertNet) - Africa's long-term development could be jeopardised by civil servants' failure to deliver government-run health, education or agricultural services, the World Bank said on Monday.
This practice - referred to by the World Bank as "quiet corruption" - steadily lowers people's expectations of service delivery systems, prompting families to sidestep the systems to meet their needs.
"Quiet corruption does not make the headlines the way bribery scandals do, but it is just as corrosive to societies," Shanta Devarajan, Chief Economist for the World Bank's Africa Region, said in a statement.
This form of corruption - smaller in monetary terms and not usually involving powerful officials or large bribes - is particularly harmful for the poor, the bank said in its Africa Development Indicators 2010 report released on Monday.
The poor are more vulnerable and more reliant on government services and public systems to satisfy their most basic needs.
One example of this type of low-level corruption comes from the education system in Burkina Faso. RENLAC, the Burkina Faso anti-corruption network, identified a primary school inspector who used to arrange for teachers posted to rural areas to be transferred back to cities if they paid her small sums of money.
"What happens to the children in these villages where there are no more teachers?" RENLAC spokesman Eli Kabore told AlertNet. "Nothing much happened in terms of punishment for this official and there are many more like that ... it is really silent and these are the real actors of corruption," he said by phone from Ouagadougou, the West African countryÂ?s capital.
In many African countries, teachers at government schools stay away from class or do not take up appointments in remote regions but they go unpunished because they are in cahoots with their supervisors. Long-term damage results as children who are denied a proper education because of absentee teachers will suffer low cognitive skills and associated problems in adulthood, the World Bank said.
HEALTH RISKS
In the health sector in Burkina Faso, low-level corruption means many people are forced to go to private health facilities for care, exposing the majority who cannot afford more expensive health care to risks of death from diseases, according to RENLAC.
"If you want an appointment with a specialist in a government hospital theyÂ?ll tell you it takes time and advise that if it is really urgent then go to this or that clinic, whereas it is the same doctors who are supposed to be working in these government hospitals who consult in the clinics at higher rates," Eli said.
"This is a form of corruption that is not seen," he added.
According to figures from the World Bank, there was an absenteeism rate of 37 percent in 2002 and 33 percent in 2003 among health care providers in Uganda, which put peopleÂ?s lives at risk.
By shining the spotlight on the issue of quiet corruption, the World Bank hopes to spark a wider debate and hasten the push for solutions, it said in a statement.
"Tackling quiet corruption will require a combination of strong and committed leadership, policies and institutions at the sectoral level, and - most important - increased accountability and participation by citizens," Devarajan said.
Here are some key facts from the report:
- A 2004 report found that 20 percent of teachers in rural western Kenyan primary schools could not be found during school hours, while in Uganda, two surveys found teacher absentee rates of 27 percent in 2002 and 20 percent in 2007.
- Poor controls at the producer and wholesaler levels resulted in 43 percent of the analyzed fertilizers sold in West Africa in the 1990s lacking the expected nutrients, meaning that they were basically ineffective.
- More than 50 percent of drugs sold in drugstores in Nigeria in the 1990s were counterfeit, according to some studies.
- In a direct observation survey of Ugandan health care providers, there was a 37 percent absenteeism rate in 2002 and 33 percent in 2003.
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