This year’s Rwanda Bribery Index, or RBI report indicates that the private sector-construction services, Rwanda Utilities Regulatory Authority (RURA) and Rwanda Police are on top of the list among the top areas where bribery is still prevalent, despite ‘zero tolerance’ measures to combat corruption.
Transparency International (T.I Rwanda) released the RBI report on December 7.
RBI is an annual report that indicates the level of corruption in Rwanda, and its causes.
According to the report, RURA employees seek bribes while delivering their services including transporting people and commodities, while public school headteachers receive bribes to issue food supply tenders, in the school feeding program.
In the private sector, particularly construction units, is reportedly the most corrupt, with a bribery rate at 15.6%, RURA officials are second with 13.8%, and the National Police in third position with a bribery rate of 11.02%.
For the public school headteachers, secondary school headteachers are in fifth position with bribery rate at 8.6% and primary school headteachers in seventh position with bribery rate at 7.4%.
T.I Rwanda says that even though the mentioned institutions are reported to be the most corrupt, there are others that have few corrupt officials, but who receive bigger amount of bribes.
In Rwanda Investigation Bureau, 16 staff received bribes worth Rwf4.5million while 6 judges received bribes worth Rwf 920,000. This year, the report indicates that the total received bribes is worth Rwf 22.8 million.
Apollinaire Mupiganyi, Executive Director of T.I Rwanda said that corruption is still detectable, and 22% of respondents during the investigations indicated that they were asked or given bribes to deliver services.
“They are over six million citizens who claimed corruption cases, and over 1 million people who were involved in asking or seeking bribes. Corruption is available, and we aren’t saying that it is reduced,” Mupiganyi said.
ACP Emmanuel Karasi, Commissioner for Inspectorate of Services and Ethics said that there is no difference between a corrupt police officer and one who uses explosives to harm citizens because none of them cannot inspect the influx of illegal commodities in the country.
ACP Karasi added that cameras have been installed to detect such illegal acts. “Those cameras are controlled in certain positions. Camera operators can see and hear what people say,” he said.
According to this year’s bribery index report, Rwanda National police, especially, traffic police officers and officers working in the driving permit issuance unit dropped seeking bribes from the first position as most corrupt institution in 2022, to the third position in 2023.
Madeleine Nirere, Rwanda’s Ombudsman urged all institutions to establish online services as one way to fight corruption, citing the success of Irembo platform on delivering government services.
