Editor in Chief: Moh. Reza Huwaida Thursday, March 28th, 2024

Ethics: Major Concern in Corruption Rate

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Ethics: Major Concern  in Corruption Rate

Introduction:
Ethics is the set of principles of right conducts or theory and system of moral values that are developed by an organization to control the smooth flow of operations within the organization. For example, the code of ethics and principles of a government are the constitutions developed by government with the cooperation of nation. Any practice that is against the constitutional articles is considered to be illegal and the person is sentenced criminal. Every individual as a member of that organization is supposed to obey the principles of the organization. As an Afghan civilian, I will try to answer the following questions in term of the ethical issues being faced in Afghanistan:

What are the main reasons that affect the ethical standards in Afghanistan?
As an Afghan high ranked government official, what are the solutions you would you suggest to rise up the ethical standards in the country?
There are many reasons such as security, illiteracy, poverty, unemployment, lack of knowledge and familiarity to the use of modern technology that cause the ethical standards to be crossed and not to be obeyed. This research I have mainly focused on Fragile Security, Employments, Salary Range and Lack of Modern Technology Literacy.

Fragile Security:
Three decades of civil war has turned the country to a save heaven for the international terrorists such as Alqa –e-da and Taliban. One main dilemma that has halted the system of the government in Afghanistan is poor security. According to a survey report by The Asia Foundation Afghanistan, "More than half of the respondents (50%) have reported that they often (18%) or sometimes (38%) fear for their personal safety or for that of their families.

Another 20% have said that they rarely feel unsecure and 24% of the respondents have reported positive." "Since 2006 to 2011, security treats have increased from 9% - 18%." Considering the survey report by the foundation and current situation of the society, security treats is one of the main factors which has caused the nation to forget obeying any ethical standard and everyone is struggling for survival. In addition, the government is not able to apply the constitutions and ethical standards in some parts of the country, especially in southern regions.

Employment:
The procedure being followed for hiring an employee for a position in government offices is another issue that adds to the level of unethical practices in the government offices. For example, when a vacancy is being announced by an organization under the regulation of the government, the position is either already reserved or is being reserved by recommendations. A relation to minister and high ranked government official is better functional than proficiency and capability of being recruited for a position. The governmental ranks and positions are being fulfilled via recommendations not via open competition to find out thedeservers for the post.

Salary Ranges:
The difference in salary range is another reason which paves the way for the government officials to cross beyond the ethical standards. The salary range for the government employees is not reasonable in comparison to the high market rate and life expenses. The positions in government offices are divided into 8 grades and each grade is being paid a specific amount of salary.

The table indicates the salary range according to grade level. Millions of dollars have been spent since establishment of government, but there has been no reasonable increment to the government salary range. This injustice itself opens the gate of corruption for the government employees and gives them good reason to kick the ethical standards away. The following table shows the percentage of corruption all over the country in 2011.

Lack of Modern Technology Literacy:
Most of the government employees are in retirement age, but still they are working. These employees are too old and do not have the energy to work in today's challenging technological environment. They do not know the use of modern technologies. The filing and documentation systems are being recorded and kept in paper files instead of using any digital database.

This issue slowdowns the performance of the government and increases the chances of corruption. As a result, administrative corruption and bribery increase day by day. These are the tow very primary corruptions that have caused the government employees to lose the value and have encouraged the nation to avoid co-operation with the government in term of obeying the codes of ethics encoded by government.
Solutions:
Fragile Security:
Security issues cannot be resolved unless we accept and respect each other's social and political rights. The idea of identifying oneself as a Pashtoon, Hazara, Tajik and Azbak should be eliminated and there should be only one identity which is Afghan. The time we approach to this conclusion that there is no one else to work for our advancement except ourselves will lead us towards better security situations.

The solution to this dilemma is to hug each other as a real brother instead of shaking hands with foreigners and begging them for help and mercy. As the idea of brotherhood among Afghans develops in real sense; then, there will be no room for any foreigner to train my Afghan brother as terrorist to destroy my house. The idea of brotherhood in real sense can't grow up, but to educate the new generations and make them understand that they are the pioneers of the new Afghanistan.

We can conclude to this issue by considering capacity as the main factor of recruitment criteria. Objectives are not being achieved, unless the right person is hired in a correct position.
Considering the current budget, government should define a balance between the salary ranges of the employees. For example, there are many private sectors and NGOs such as UNDP, The Asia Foundation who are paying the high ranked government officials' salaries. The government can decrease the high ranked employees' salary and distribute on the salary of lower rank grade employees.

Private sectors are paying their employees many times more than government which causes jealousy for the government employees and make them to do corruption as an alternative. In order to overcome this problem, this is advised to set a balance of salary for private sectors that they are not allowed to pay an employee more than the preset amount.

The filing and documentation system should be digitalized. In order to achieve these objectives, it is not possible to expend this solution using the current human resources. In addition, it is not practical to forcefully make the current aged government officials to retire. Instead there should be a gradual replacement of the current employees with new generations who are familiar with the modern technology.

The new generations are the wealth of the nation; the government should develop a replacement strategy to replace all those employees who do not have the capacity to cope with the modern age technologies. This will help the government to decrease the corruption rate in the country, because new generations are not corrupted by default and they of course have sympathy to the people and country.

Abbas Ali Sultani is the permanent writer of Daily Outlook Afghanistan. He can be reached at ali.ccna@hotmail.com.

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