Corruption a way of life in Vietnam, study shows

The United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) in Vietnam released the result of its seven-year long study on Wednesday on the efficiency index of Vietnam’s public administration, which surveyed nearly 75,000 people across 63 cities and provinces from 2009.
Hanoi and Ho Chi Minh City had the biggest subject pools, with some 10 per cent of permanent residents in each city participating in the survey.
The research showed that the number of people speaking out about “greasing” palms in Ho Chi Minh had dropped significantly to 2.3 per cent in 2015 from 12.5 per cent four years earlier.
Meanwhile, not a single Hanoi respondent reported corrupt acts to police last year, which was not really a surprise as only 0.2 per cent did in 2011.
The study also recorded the average bribe that would drive a Ho Chi Minh City resident to the police stood at 34.8 million dong (US$1,540) in 2015, a sevenfold increase compared to the tipping point of 5.8 million dong in 2011.
“Those figures reflected an increasing tendency of Vietnamese in getting used to corruption,” said UNDP policy analyst Do Thi Thanh Huyen.
“Corruption still exists and is getting worse despite determined efforts from the highest level to eradicate it.”

Under the table
According to the study, more than 28 per cent of Ho Chi Minh respondents said they had to pay an average of nearly 14.5 million dong to have land use certificates granted. The amount was about 12 times higher in Hanoi at about 1.2 million dong.
Yet the capital scored higher in terms of “unofficial payments” to medical staff for better treatment at public hospitals. Hanoi respondents said they had to pay on average more than 3.5 million dong extra per hospital visit, compared to about 730,000 dong extra for Ho Chi Minh City residents.
The public education sector was not left untainted either. Parents in Hanoi were somehow forced to pay an extra of about 630,000 dong per semester to primary teachers or school administrative boards last year, a 25 per cent drop from some 824,000 dong a semester in 2011.
The trend, meanwhile, was going upwards in Ho Chi Minh City. It cost parents nearly 853,000 dong a semester for unregulated school fees last year, rising from 510,000 dong a semester in 2011.
The survey also shows that more than 50 per cent of Vietnamese citizens believe people have to pay a bribe to get a job in the government.
The citizens believe public servants are not recruited based on employees’ capabilities but their personal connections. They were marked by the survey takers as “important” or “very important” criterion to earn a seat in the government for five consecutive years.
More than a quarter agreed that public servants embezzled money for personal use in 2015, a slight increase from 21 per cent four years earlier.
Despite rhetorical calls from top leaders to combat corruption over the years, the national epidemic still rages in the country as Vietnam is continuously ranked in the bottom of the global corruption perception indexes (CPI).
Transparency International last year placed the Southeast Asian nation 112th out of 168 countries and territories in terms of corruption in the public sector.
Vietnam’s CPI score was only 31 points on the 100 point scale, which has remained unchanged in four consecutive years since 2012 and has the country listed as having a serious corruption problem.