Kenya Police most corrupt institution: Index

The Kenya Police is the most corrupt institution in the country, according to a Transparency International Bribery Index.

The index, which covers five East African countries, shows that the Nairobi City Council, Defence Ministry, the Judiciary, the Lands Ministry, department of Registration of Persons and the Kenya Prisons Service are the institutions where graft is most prevalent, in that order.

Kenya Ports Authority, the ministry of Immigration and the ministry of Forestry and Wildlife completed the list of top ten corrupt institutions in the country.

According to the findings of the survey, the average size of bribes in most of these institutions also increased.

For instance, in the Ministry of Defence, it increased from Sh42,000 in 2009 to 53,500 this year, while that of the Judiciary increased from Sh6,828 to Sh11,046.

However, Kenya relinquished its position as the most corrupt country in East Africa to Burundi.

TI-Kenya’s Executive Director Mr Samuel Kimeu, while releasing the findings revealed that Burundi, which only joined the East African Community three years ago, had the highest graft prevalence rate in the region at 36.7 percent.

Uganda came in at second place with a 33 percent corruption prevalence rate.

It was closely followed by Kenya at 31.9 percent while Tanzania was fourth with 28.6 percent.

Rwanda was ranked the least corrupt country in the region with a prevalence of 6.6 percent.

The Revenue Authority in Burundi emerged as the most corrupt institution in the region, dislodging the Kenya Police which topped the ranking in 2010.

Slight improvement

The Kenya Police made a slight improvement but was still ranked as the third most corrupt institution in the region.

Efforts to get comments from Police Spokesman Mr Eric Kiraithe were futile as his phone remained unanswered.

The survey was conducted among 10,505 respondents selected through random household sampling across all the administrative provinces in the five countries between January and March this year.

Kenya had a sample size of 3,022.

According to the report, the perception of corruption in the country has not changed much with 90 percent of respondents rating the country as being between corrupt and extremely corrupt.

Sixty Eight percent of respondents, according to the Index, felt that corruption levels in the country were likely to increase in the next one year.