Fighting Corruption through open communication
I begin this short essay with this question: How do one fight corruption in a society where corruption is entranced and arguably the norm? The short answer is, it is difficult but can be done. For one fact corruption almost always involves two or more persons and are kept secret. Those involved with the act of corruption clearly know that it is wrong. Their greatest weapon is secrecy. For instance, in bribery, the giver of the bribe and the receiver of the bribe benefits and because of this mutual interest, they both keep their act secret.
The good news is that even as secret as it can be, corruption leaves traces or footprints behind and other people know about these footprints. The challenge is how to develop an information gathering system where people who know about corruption can report it in a safe manner wherein information they report cannot be used to hunt them in any manner, shape and form.
After taking over The Salvation Army Polytechnic (T-SAP) as the first President, I grappled with these things. One idea I innovated was a clear system of information gathering and reporting that is confidential and harmless to those who give pieces of information. I innovated the idea of creating two integrity boxes. We labelled one box “Grievance Box” and the other “Innovation Box”. Made in the form of cash boxes, people can only put written information in the boxes and are unable to access the information after placing it in the box or boxes.
We asked members of our school community to write up their concerns and put them in the grievance box. “What is hurting you? Do you see a teacher or a student doing something that is against our school code of conduct? Are you not satisfied with the teaching techniques and the services we offer at T-SAP?” Let us know through the grievance box, I encouraged the students and campus community. “What ideas do you have that will help improve T-SAP? You now have an innovation box to make your suggestions”, I announced to the students and teachers. We encouraged people to write only the information and not their names. If an information giver wanted to write his or her name, that was ok but not required.
We locked the boxes and only my secretary had the key. I developed a special database for him to enter the information he gathered from the boxes every Friday. I instructed him to keep the hard copies in a special locked drawer. I reviewed the database and the hard copies every Monday morning.
Through this open communication strategy, we were able to track corruption cases. In one instance, three students anonymously reported that a teacher administered a make-up exam and requested that each student pay $500 Liberian Dollars as a requirement to pass the exam. Our investigation found the teacher guilty and was immediately fired. We wrote a memo to the campus community informing them about the investigation and firing of the teacher that was guilty.
On other issues students also wrote about the dirtiness of their bathrooms. One I read the notes, I decided to use the boys bathroom myself to see first-hand. At first, the janitors tried to prevent me from entering the boys bathrooms but I insisted. Indeed, I observed that the boys' bathrooms were filthy.
I had a meeting with the janitors to inquire what was causing the bathrooms to be filthy. They informed me that some students misuse the bathroom by squatting on the toilet and urinating on the floor. We designed a strategy to lock the bathrooms and the janitors to have keys. If a student wanted to use the bathroom, he must ask for the key and right after using it, the janitor would inspect the bathroom to make sure the student did not mess it. Next, we informed the students about this plan through mass meetings and through memos. This strategy created clean bathrooms for everyone’s enjoyment.
Students also wrote about damaged chairs or lack of chairs in their classrooms. We observed the situation ourselves and intervened to make sure proper chairs were provided.
From the analysis above, we can conclude that one strategy of fighting corruption is to create an enabling environment for an open and secured communication system where everyone is allowed to express his or her opinions, report corruption and other vices anonymously. A key encouragement for reporting is for administration to take action after gathering information.
