AFGHANISTAN: Wage Hike as Anti-Corruption Move

By IPS Correspondents Reprint | | Print |

Sediqullah Bader and Dad Noorani - The Killid Group*

KABUL, Nov 17 2006 (IPS) - The Hamid Karzai government has decided to raise the salaries of government employees in an attempt to rein in widespread corruption in Afghanistan.

Salaries at the lowest end of the civil service ladder will now be 80 US dollars per month while top bureaucrats could earn a monthly salary of 800 dollars – too feeble some say to tackle corruption.

Civil servants are paid low in Afghanistan and their salaries compare badly with the 2,000 dollars that many non-governmental organisations (NGOs) pay their ‘volunteers’ and workers.

Even skilled workers earn about three times what bureaucrats take home and this situation has been identified as the main reason behind the rampant corruption and low work-efficiency prevailing in the country. It is hoped that the planned wage revision will improve living standards and increase productivity in government institutions.

Corruption is among the main challenges facing Afghanistan. The president has publicly committed his government to its fight, partly in reaction to mounting criticism from local and foreign media and donor countries. Commissions have been set up to address corruption within his administration and state institutions.

However, there has been no measurable change in the basic processes by which state affairs are conducted on behalf of the people.

Vetting and purging corrupt officials and instituting legal proceedings against those believed to be involved could curb corruption to an extent, an editorial in Killid Weekly, an independent magazine has asserted.

“The clean-up operation has to start at the top with prominent politicians and state officials. Prosecuting or dismissing low-ranking employees will not end the problem. Due consideration must be given to their grim working and living conditions,” the editorial advised.

In addition, placement and salary scales of civil servants should be decided on the basis of merit and not nepotism.

Attorney General Jaber Sabet recently launched the government’s seemingly tough anti-corruption campaign. But his efforts are being hampered from the top, Afghanistan’s independent media have reported.

There was bitter criticism when Kabul International Airport border police chief Amin Amarkheil was suddenly removed. The official had made himself unpopular by taking a tough line on drug traffickers, who have political influence among key government officials and allies of the president, it has been hinted.

“Some officials want to protect friends and family, while others are ensuring that their political friends and allies are not targeted,” according to Killid Weekly.

The editorial warned: “Public administration reform cannot be effective when the rule of law is compromised for reasons of personal and political expediency. If the government is serious about accountability it must implement its reform agenda across the board and no one should be unduly protected.

Rampant corruption has given the Afghan government a bad name, undermined its legitimacy among the public and drawn criticism from the international community.

The World Bank has given the green signal to the decision to raise the salaries of civil servants. In October, the North Atlantic Treaty Organisation (NATO) led military command in Afghanistan announced that the country was again at a “tipping point” and unless living standards of ordinary Afghans improve within the next six months, more and more people are likely to shift their sympathy to the Taliban.

Moreover, quick and large-scale reconstruction was essential in the restive southern provinces where the Taliban have regrouped to take on government and NATO-led troops in intense fighting, the Bank has advised.

“If the decision to raise salaries had been taken last year, things would not have been so bad today. It shows the short term thinking of Afghan policy makers and their international advisors and financiers. The government and the international community have a lot to learn from the way this issue has been handled. We shouldn’t wait until disaster strikes and then think about how to deal with it,” a second Killid editorial in October has concluded.

Five years after the Taliban were ousted from Kabul, the Karzai government has not been able to bring all of Afghanistan under its control or restore the rule of law.

In a recent interview with Fortune magazine, the president admitted “there is corruption in the whole system”.

The judiciary also is not immune to being influenced. A legacy of more than two decades of war, the legal system like other state institutions was heavily compromised by sectarian and party politics. The previous members of the country’s highest judicial body were mullahs (clerics) and religious scholars with virtually no modern legal training.

Delivery of justice was reduced to fatwas and summary justice. Citizens received justice on the basis of their purchasing power.

A new Supreme Court council led by Chief Justice Abdul Salam Azimi, an Al Azhar graduate, is seeking to restructure and reform the legal system at the local level, where most of the cases are handled. Although a quick clean up is unlikely, a beginning has to be made.

(*Released under agreement with The Killid Group)