As many as 41.% Pakistanis believe that police is the most corrupt sector in the country, followed by the judiciary (17.4%), and contracting/tendering (10.3%), according to a nationwide perceptions survey by Transparency International released on Wednesday.

The survey was conducted in all four provinces from October 14, 2021, to October 27, 2021, with 1,600 respondents. This is the fifth time the survey has revealed that police remains the most corrupt sector of the country, shows data.

The body had surveyed nine sectors – including police, judiciary, public procurement, land administration, health, local government, education, taxation, and NGO – in the National Corruption Perception Surveys 2021.

The survey, which was conducted five times over the last 20 years, reported that at least 80 per cent of people considered the federal government’s self-accountability to be “unsatisfactory.”

Moreover, the list of public services for which the people had to pay bribes was topped by contracts of roads (59.8%), cleanliness and garbage collection (13.8%), access to water (13.3%) and drainage system (13.1%). At the same time, a significant population (81.4%) declined to willingly pay bribes, resulting in a perception that “bribes are rather extorted from the public through tactics such as inaction or delay.”

Interestingly, 89.1% of the people said they did not pay any bribe to any government official during the federal government’s Covid-19 relief efforts for the deserving citizens.

On measures to reduce corruption, 40.1% of people called for increased/stringent punishments for corruption cases, 34.6% stressed the need for accountability of public officers by expediting NAB’s handling of corruption cases, and 25.3% said a complete ban on those convicted in corruption from holding public office.

Inflation

Over 90% of Pakistanis consider inflation and price hike to be the highest in the incumbent PTI-led government (2018-2021) compared to the previous two governments.

“Majority of Pakistanis (92.9%) consider inflation and price hike to be highest in the current PTI government (2018-2021), compared to 4.6 % in PML N government (2013-2018) and 2.5% in PPP government (2008-2013),” the data shows.

“This coincides with 85.9% Pakistanis who say that their income levels have rather squeezed and decreased during the last three years,” it read.

When asked about the main reasons for rising inflation and unemployment, 50.6% of the people blamed government incompetence, corruption (23.3%), undue interference of politicians in government affairs (9.6%), and lack of implementation of policies (16.6%).

In addition to this, other key findings of the survey were that about 47.8% of Pakistanis considered that if local government elected representatives were in place, Covid-19 public awareness campaigns could have been launched in an effective manner.

Weak accountability (51.9%), the greed of powerful people (29.3%) and low salaries (18.8%) were the three most important causes of corruption, as per the report.

According to the Judicial Statistics of Pakistan 2020 report by the National Judicial (Policy Making) Committee, there are 46,698 cases pending in the Supreme Court and 1,772,990 cases pending in the district judiciary.