CORRUPTION IS ON THE INCREASE IN THE CIVIL SERVICES.

WHAT ARE THE CAUSES

WHICH CAN BE TAKE TO OVERCOME THE PROBLEMS.

INTRODUCTION

The word corruption is derived from the Latin word "corruptus," which means
"corrupted." In terms of law, corruption is the abuse of a position of trust in the executive,
legislative, or judicial branches of government, as well as in political or other organisations,
with the goal of obtaining material benefits that are not permitted for oneself or for others.
Corruption can be in various forms such as bribery, embezzlement or fraud and extortion.
Among them, bribery is the most common form of corruption within the civil service, where
benefits will be provided to or seek by the public official either in a form of money, gifts or
others services in exchange for their administrative power to be used in their favour. For
instance, prosecutors, judges, and law enforcement officials who may be bought off so that
the criminal activity is not looked into, prosecuted, or the verdict is favourable to those who
paid the bribe. Other than that, bribery that supports unfair competition for advantages or
resources, in which civil personnel in charge of establishing and awarding contracts for goods
or services may be bought off to ensure that contracts are granted to the briber’s company
and on favourable conditions of them. As for embezzlement or fraud, its entails the taking or
conversion of money, property, or valuables by someone who is not legally entitled to them
but has access to them due to their position or employment. In this instance, the property is
taken by a person who has been given authority and an office. Fraud, on the other hand,
might take a different turn when someone uses false and deceptive information to persuade
the owner of the property to give it up voluntarily. An official (public servant), for instance,
who steals or embezzles relief donations, shipments of food or medical supplies, or who
persuades an assistance agency to provide more aid than is necessary by inflating the
number of persons in need which constitutes a fraud. Extortion involves compulsion, such as
the use of physical threats or the disclosure of negative information to coerces a
collaboration. The person being forced into cooperation in this case is a victim of corruption.
For example, a doctor may demand for payment in exchange for a swiftly medical
consultation, when the medical service or aid is a necessity to the patient health or even his
life. As a result, the poor patients who are unable to pay the bribe are put in a position of
tremendous hardship, causing them to suffer more from worsened illnesses and eventually
died aggrievedly.
 Even though corruption varies from one nation to the next, there are some major
factors that are common to all of them. Firstly, the political and economic circumstances
have a big impact on the corruption phenomena. Since people are eager to pay or offer
payment in order to circumvent constraints, the more restricted and regulated the country's
economic activity is, the greater the authority and power of officials in making decisions and
the greater the likelihood of corruption. Particularly where officials subject to regulation are
permitted to make decisions based on discretion, there is a high potential for corruption. In
addition, he low wage of public administration employees (state officials), who consequently
try to improve their financial situation by accepting bribes, has a significant impact on
corruption. However, low wages are not the only cause of corruption; the terrible status of
the public administration, which results from political "overcrowding" of officials, where
loyalty typically supersedes over professional standards which is phenomenon of crony, also
has a significant impact on corruption.
Secondly, Lack of professional ethics and ineffective laws that regulating corruption
as a crime, as well as the prosecution and punishment of it, only increase the likelihood that
those involved will continue their corruptive behaviour. At the same time, there is a high
likelihood that others will join in the corruption as a result of this ineffective punishment. For
instance, in some transition countries that the “softer” acts of corruption are often
considered to be acceptable and justifiable. Besides that, the complexity, lack of
transparency, or incompleteness of the law, which allows for a variety of interpretations
where its typically favouring those in positions of power and subsequently contributes to
corruption.
Thirdly, habits, customs, tradition and demography is one of the factor of the
increase of corruption. The viewpoint toward corruption might be vary as different countries
naturally have different social values. In Asia society especially Malaysia, we have the
tendency to present gifts to people as a token of gratitude including to the public servants
even though they were paid by the government. This have indirectly provide a chance for the
spreading of corruption with the civil services as corrupted could used the above custom as a
façade or excuse for receiving bribery.
As such, due to the disastrous impacts that could be brought by corruption of the
civil service to a nation. Prevention is essential and crucial in curbing corruption from further
spreading within the civil service and eroding the future of our nation.
Firstly, the most basic and traditional method, which is the government increases the
penalties pertaining corruption such as the fines, years of imprisonment or even the
numbers of whipping and tightening its enforcement through amending the law for anti-
corruption, though there is a risk that it might be used as a weapon by the government to
oppress its political opponents under such method through fabrication.
Secondly, the government should have the increase wages and benefits of civil
servants. The government should have down-size the numbers of civil servants which is
currently “bloated” by sacking those corrupted, poor-performing, inefficient and ill-discipline
civil servants as our neighbouring country, Singapore. As such, the government could use the
extra money to increases the wages and benefits of the remaining productive civil servants
which consequently not only reduce the chances of corruption but at the same time
enhances the productivity and efficiency of the government in providing its public service by
attracting more talents into the public sector.
Thirdly, the government should review and improvise its fiscal policies. For instance,
the government could replace the tax incentives with tax system with broad bases and low
rates. Tax incentives particularly on the discretionary decision part conferred to the public
official is the part where corruption is develops. In addition, the government is advised to
replace some quasi-fiscal regulation with taxing and spending policies. It is notable that
countries that have high tax-burden such as Canada, Denmark and Sweden are countries that
enjoy a low corruption rates. On the contrary, countries that have low tax burden such as
China, Bangladesh, Nigeria, Pakistan and Venezuela have the highest corruption rates. The
reformation of fiscal policies could imposed the taxes more effectively on the rich and
extends help to the truly underprivileged groups in the society through the provision of
financial aid and subsidy from the revenue collected through the taxation. As a result, not
only the corruption could be curb as the public officials would have lesser discretionary
power in the fiscal policies, but at the same time the discrepancies of income between the
rich and poor or economic inequality would be reduced.
 SEARCH STRATEGY
Corruption is a severe problem and there are several causes to overcome it. In order
to gather information pertaining on this topic, we have discovered four steps to gather all the
necessary data from a variety of sources. Beginning with Part A, we identified the concepts
of "internet" and "communication" in the question before coming up with synonyms for each
term. We came up with the alternative words "Corruption," "Bribery," and "Misconduct," as
well as "causes" "factor," and "reason." We arranged the phrases to create the search phrase
(Corruption OR Bribery) AND (Causes OR Factors) and (Corruption OR Misconduct) AND
(Causes OR reasons). With the search statement from Part A, we can proceed to Part B. We
searched for materials through the Pendeta Discovery by accessing it through University of
Malaya library website (http://umlib.um.edu.my) and clicked on the Pendeta Discovery. We
managed to find a doctoral dissertation, a book and a unpublished conference paper that are
relevant to our topic. All the materials can be found in the Central Library.

As we move on to Part C, we were tasked with looking up eight entries in the online
databases to which the University of Malaya has subscribed. By entering our membership
identification number into the library portal and selecting a database from the list provided,
we can access the online databases. Journal papers from various databases, including
Science Direct, Sage Journal, Jstor, and Project Muse, made up the data that we discovered.

Part D came next, where we had to use the search engine to look for articles. We had
conducted a Google search for articles using the topic and the search query, and we came up
with one written report from an organisation and 2 journal article from web resources.

Finally, we assembled all the records from Parts A to D and subsequently produced

citations for each record. We compiled all the data and used EndNote to verify our citations.
In accordance with the data discovered from the records, we have composed an introduction
for our subject.
 OBJECTIVE
i. Identify definition of corruption
ii. Identify the causes of corruption
iii. Identify the methods of prevention to corruption.
 LITERATURE REVIEW
According to (Antonyan & Polyakov, 2022), corruption is a constant in society and
happens in all civilizations, although it has only just started to receive substantial research
attention. It affects the economy and society as a whole in a variety of ways and takes on
many different forms. The political and economic environment, professional ethics and
morality, as well as, obviously, habits, customs, tradition, and demographics, are among the
most frequent causes of corruption. Although extensively studied, its effects on the economy
(and also on broader society) are still not fully understood. Therefore, corruption hinders
economic development and has an impact on corporate operations, jobs, and investments.
Additionally, it lessens tax receipts and financial aid programmes' efficiency. A high level of
corruption affects society as a whole by diminishing trust in the law, the rule of law,
education, and ultimately the quality of life (access to infrastructure, health care).
Furthermore, there is no clear solution for how to handle corruption. Something that is
effective in one nation or region may not always be profitable in another. This chapter
attempts to address at least a few queries regarding corruption, its causes, its effects, and
effective methods of dealing with it.
The presented article examines the concept, content and main types of
administrative and legal forms and methods used to combat corruption in the field of public
administration of the transport complex, used on the territory of the Russian Federation. The
ways in which executive authority are operated under legal and administrative regulation are
also significant. It is easy to determine how efficiently or ineffectively they execute their
authority by analysing the public administration practises they adopt. Numerous queries on
the effective exercise of executive power in the Russian Federation can be addressed thanks
to the study of administrative and legal procedures. Public authorities suffer great losses as a
result of corruption, which also significantly lowers the efficiency of public administration.
It's crucial to tackle corruption manifestations by utilizing the most up-to-date and efficient
administrative and judicial tools.(Antonyan & Polyakov, 2022).
In (Meyer-Sahling & Mikkelsen, 2020), it demonstrates how discipline and ethical
norms affect preventing corruption in the federal service. We evaluate the utility of both
tools and their potential for mutual reinforcement. We discover that, when put into practise,
disciplinary and ethics standards reinforce one another to prevent kickbacks, one type of
corruption in the civil service, using a novel survey of central government civil officials from
Poland. Discipline and ethical rules, on the other hand, are not particularly linked to
kickbacks in central government ministries. The paper comes to the conclusion that
managers who have access to a variety of consistently used anti-corruption instruments
perform at their best.
REFERENCE
International Monetary Fund. Fiscal Affairs Dept., & International Monetary Fund. Legal
Dept. (2016). Corruption: Costs and Mitigating Strategies. Staff Discussion Notes,
2016(005), A001. https://doi.org/10.5089/9781513594330.006.A001.
Antonyan, E., & Polyakov, M. (2022). Administrative and legal forms and methods of
combating corruption in the field of public administration of the transport complex.
Transportation Research Procedia, 63, 2295-2300.
https://doi.org/https://doi.org/10.1016/j.trpro.2022.06.261
Meyer-Sahling, J.-H., & Mikkelsen, K. S. (2020). Codes of Ethics, Disciplinary Codes, and the
Effectiveness of Anti-Corruption Frameworks: Evidence from a Survey of Civil
Servants in Poland. Review of Public Personnel Administration, 42(1), 142-164.
https://doi.org/10.1177/0734371X20949420
 DISCUSSION

In actuality, corruption is a multidirectional process. Both the recipient and the

provider are aware of the secret deed, and both parties benefited from it. Everybody else,
the victims, is the third link in the chain. Even while not all acts of corruption are currently
crimes, they are nevertheless immoral and harmful to the social, economic, and political
advancement of a society. Typically, there are individuals involved in positions of political,
economic, and decision-making authority. According to philosopher Karl Popper, the biggest
challenge is not determining who should issue orders but rather, how to manage the
individual who does so. How can political and social institutions be set up to limit the
damage that weak and inept leaders might cause? The price of freedom is perpetual
attention, though, as there is no universal or clear-cut mechanism to stop the tyranny or
corruptions of the heavyweights.   Since the beginning of civilization, greed, ambition,
rapacity, and immorality have been well-known to human society. They make use of all the
means at their disposal, including friendship, family ties, contacts from school, mutual
interests, and, of course, political and religious affiliations.
Nonetheless, there remains certain things that should be stressed. Nearly all studies
ignore the fact that the top-ranking most corrupt nations are those that are experiencing one
of the many armed conflicts (civil wars, intertribal conflicts, interreligious wars, or other
forms of aggression), meaning that maintaining peace in the nation is necessary for a
successful campaign against corruption. As such, the nations with the longest-lasting peace
on their land (the majority since the Second World War or longer) are also the least corrupt.
Therefore, one of the requirements for a successful campaign against corruption is peace.
The best strategy for tackling corruption is not clear-cut; some nations (Singapore,
Estonia, and Georgia) have done it with remarkable success in a short period of time, while
others have struggled for a very long time (the most famous example is Italy). In any
instance, ensuring freedom (personal freedom, economic freedom, freedom of speech,
freedom of the press, etc.) and democracy comes first, followed by raising people's
consciousness and level of education. However, at this time, it is not about implementing
democracy as we know it from the West because history has repeatedly shown that doing so,
particularly with the aid of the military, has more negative effects than positive ones. It is
essential to begin utilising the best practises of nations with similar cultures (religion,
customs, traditions, ethics, and morality), as well as those with a shared history.