Jensen La Vende

T&T has dropped three places on the Cor­rup­tion Per­cep­tion In­dex this year mov­ing from 80 to 83 and tieing with Ja­maica and Guyana as the Caribbean's sixth-ranked na­tion.Dur­ing a news con­fer­ence called by the T&T Trans­paren­cy In­sti­tute at its of­fices at Fer­nan­des Com­pound, East­ern Main Road, Laven­tille, yes­ter­day TT­TI's chair­man Deryck Mur­ray said the drop "nu­mer­i­cal­ly its not sig­nif­i­cant," how­ev­er, it is a move in the wrong di­rec­tion.

Asked what were some of the things that af­fect­ed the coun­try's cor­rup­tion per­cep­tion, mem­ber of the TT­TI, Josh Dray­ton, said the is­su­ing of pub­lic con­tracts and the grant­i­ng of var­i­ous li­cences were the ma­jor con­tributers.Re­spond­ing to ques­tions from the me­dia, Dray­ton said there was a need to re­form the In­tegri­ty Com­mis­sion so that it had an­ti-cor­rup­tion com­mis­sion pow­ers.

He added: "The In­tegri­ty Com­mis­sion can­not al­ways be about de­clar­ing as­sets. It has to go be­yond that. You have to go in­to pros­e­cu­tions and that is one of the re­al signs of deal­ing with cor­rup­tion."If a coun­try does not pros­e­cute then the mes­sage you are send­ing to the peo­ple of Trinidad and To­ba­go is that noth­ing is be­ing done."

He said the In­tegri­ty Com­mis­sion need­ed to widen its scope to be able to cap­ture dif­fer­ent lev­els of cor­rup­tion and not nec­es­sar­i­ly cor­rup­tion in pub­lic life be­cause peo­ple in pub­lic life was just the cat­e­go­ry."What hap­pens to that per­son who is not cat­e­gorised as per­sons in pub­lic life. We need a trans­paren­cy to ral­ly with civ­il so­ci­ety, ral­ly with every­body else in the pop­u­la­tion to do some­thing about it," he added.

Mur­ray, in re­sponse to the me­dia, said the de­crease from last year means there were those who have se­ri­ous con­cerns about lev­el of cor­rup­tion in the coun­try which need­ed to be com­bat­ted."The mis­sion is to have a cor­rup­tion-free na­tion" he said, adding the per­cep­tion can af­fect the aid the coun­try can ac­cess and the type of in­vest­ment it can at­tract.The score the coun­try cur­rent­ly holds pre­dates any per­cep­tion of cor­rup­tion from Au­gust and any per­ceived cor­rup­tion there­after would af­fect next year's rat­ing.