The team from the Lahore College for Women University won $288 for their speech on corruption in Pakistan
LONDON (TrustLaw) – A speech about corruption in Pakistan has earned students from a women’s university first place in an anti-graft competition and a prize of 25,000 rupees ($288), The Express Tribune reported.
The team from the Lahore College for Women University were competing in a nationwide documentary competition organised by anti-graft watchdog Transparency International-Pakistan at Karachi’s College of Business Management (CBM). They beat 14 other teams to claim first prize.
“The root cause of corruption, its sole motivator, must be recognised and understood in order to carry out an anti-corruption movement,” dean of the CBM, Javed Ansari, told the assembled audience in his introductory remarks.
The student teams attempted to provide that understanding of corruption by shining a light on some less publicised forms of graft.
The winning team from the Lahore College for Women University highlighted corruption in Pakistan’s energy sector. They told their audience that 30,000 cases of electricity theft had been reported in the previous 10 months.
“The easiest targets of corruption are the poor as they are easily intimidated,” the presenters said.
A team from the Bahauddin Zakariya University in Multan, central Pakistan, also spoke about the frustrations of Pakistan’s lower income groups, forced to buy from market vendors who rig their scales and milkmen who top up their milk with water.
Another team, from the Hyderabad Institute of Arts, Sciences and Technology, presented a documentary that focused on corruption in Pakistan’s police force and also highlighted the effects that corruption had on pollution.
“There is so much pollution in our country that if it were not for our lungs we would have nowhere to keep it,” The Express Tribune quoted the team’s documentary as saying.
Fifteen thousand rupees ($173) and 10,000 rupees ($115) were given to the second and third place teams respectively, The Express Tribune reported.
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