Hyderabad 'most corrupt city'

Hyderabad has emerged as the most corrupt city in a group of five cities covered in an exit poll on corruption carried out by the Centre for Media Studies (CMS) in five cities.

Claimed to be the first of its kind, the poll was conducted at six government public service departments in Hyderabad, Pune, Delhi, Lucknow, and Chennai as part of Vigilance Awareness Week.

The survey has revealed that nearly half the people who go to government public service departments in Hyderabad are asked to pay a bribe. The hotbeds of corruption in Hyderabad are the Municipal Corporation of Hyderabad, Hyderabad Urban Development Authority and the Road Transport Authority.

Approximately 2,576 visitors to government departments were interviewed from October 31 to November 3 on their way out of these offices by the researchers, who said that a surprisingly low 20 per cent complained about corruption while 80 per cent opted to remain silent, but the research did not say why.

Paid bribes
In Hyderabad and Lucknow, 60 per cent of the respondents interviewed said they paid bribes as against 50 per cent in Pune and only 38 per cent in Chennai.

Sixty per cent of the Chennai respondents voted politicians the most corrupt. Forty-two per cent felt that touts were present in public service offices. The study also showed that people in Hyderabad and Lucknow suffer most from the menace of middlemen or touts.

The poll also suggested that businessmen and self-employed people paid more bribes than any other group of people in all the five cities. The survey's most surprising revelation was that more than 40 per cent of government employees in these cities paid bribes at one point or the other.

Nearly 63 per cent felt that despite corruption in government offices being "real" and "big", nothing was being done to stop it and that the judiciary was also ineffective.

Revisit
One-third said they did not revisit the concerned government office on the same job since their work had been done but 54 per cent said they had to revisit the office as their work had not done on that particular day.

But what came as a rude shock for the Central Vigilance Commission was the fact that only one-third of the respondents said they heard of Vigilance Awareness Week (October 31). Sixty-nine per cent said they were not aware of it.