NIA urges Jamaicans to pressure gov't to fight corruption

By Racquel Porter    

 

National Integrity Action (NIA) is urging Jamaicans to exert more pressure on the government through various channels to enact policies that align with the fight against corruption.

 

This follows news Tuesday that Jamaica has fallen four places on Transparency International's Corruption Perceptions Index (CPI) Country Rankings.

 

Based on the 2024 report, Jamaica is now ranked number 73 out of 180 countries, compared with 69 out of 180 countries in 2023.

 

But Jamaica's CPI score of 44 out of 100, where 0 means 'highly corrupt', and 100 means 'very clean', has remained unchanged from 2023.

 

Danielle Archer, Principal Director of NIA, has questioned what laws are being passed to strengthen or defeat corruption. 

 

"Jamaica continues to mark time, tread water, however you want to describe it. For the fifth year in a row, we're at 44. For the fifth year in a row we continue to be in the very same position. What that means is that we're not doing anything to move the score and what you want to look at is the trend. 

 

"Have we strengthened our anti-corruption framework or have we sought to dismantle it? And if we continue to weaken the anti-corruption framework, over time you will find that we are actually going to decrease or decline in our scores," she asserted. 

 

Lamenting that the anti-corruption watchdog group's recommendations to successive governments about legislation and the need to strengthen the anti-corruption framework has fallen on deaf ears, Ms. Archer said it is now time for a new approach. 

 

"We cannot expect that the governments are going to strengthen the anti-corruption framework without any social pressure, and this means, therefore, that every single Jamaican has to take responsibility for their own acts of corruption. Let's move the needle somewhere to recognising that when we participate or encourage acts of corruption, we are creating the foundation for the perpetuity of corruption in our own experience," she reasoned. 

 

To this end, she said the NIA, through support from the United Kingdom, will launch an anti-bribery campaign. 

 

She was speaking at the launch of the 2024 Corruption Perceptions Index on Tuesday morning.

 

Denmark, 90, Finland, 88, and Singapore with a score of 84/100 are at the top of the global index.

 

South Sudan, 8, Somalia, 9, and Venezuela with a score of 10/100 are the worst performing countries.