I write this small piece of history not with the intention to emasculate people of higher grade and those in the higher position. Corruption practices has been the most unbridled one since the birth of democracy and the forms and manifestation of corruption are beyond explanation. Corruption is really an impediment to the growth of budding economy, social justice, and peace and even to the public interest.

If a system of management is plagued with the disease of corruption, the burgeoning structure and implementation policies will give dreadful results.

And if our boss gets corrupted, the subordinates will be inspired to follow it and the impugned area will take its birth.

It was in the month of March, 2007 where the managing Director of Army Welfare Project was found guilty of falsifying documents of worth more than hundred million Ngultrum and the court took a massive decision where the guilty was sentenced to nine years in prison and all his assets that he had customized during his tenure was confiscated and later auctioned it.

A month later, the director of Royal Institute of Management, Semtokha was fined and punished for officially misuse of powers and for exercising power that was detrimental to his clerk.

During last decade, ACC had done a dire investigation for MoH where a procurement rule was not followed and there was lapses and acceptance of favors from bidders, flaws and irregularities in the tendering process. Similarly, our government lost billions of Ngultrum in lottery scam in Kerala. Bhutanese lottery tickets were illegally printed and sold million of it and the Bhutanese officials failed their duties of enforcing laws.

We also heard and seen in the media the corrupt practices in Samtse Mining and Bjemina and very recently Gyelpozhing land scam. Can ACC take massive actions on those elite people where the beneficiaries from land swindle are all big fishes? The media needs to play a pivotal role on this part and the public are fervent enough to hear on this.

The questions that need to answer are how to curb corruption from the society? Does it mean that we need to accept corruption as a fact of life? Making forged documents, misuse of power, false declaration of financial reports, duping the innocent people, cash embezzlement are the most prominent corruption that I have heard from the media and I still remember the famous adage “More corrupt the state, more laws”. For ours we do have ACC given vivid mandate of curbing corruption from our society but it is not always the duty of ACC to take sterner measures in curtailing corrupt practices and the various leaders of public agencies, corporations and head of departments has the more responsibilities in doing so. The leaders need to remember the rationale of cause and effects and even the altruism. The rise in corruption activities is ensuing battle for us and let’s develops the precept that there is less room for corruption. Every one of us has the moral duty to uphold justice and to act against the corruption as per the constitution and let’s do it now and set the right precedent for our younger generation.

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