Traffic Police, local government institutions, and Rwanda Energy Group (REG) are government institutions that lead in regard to the likelihood of bribery, according to the 2022 Rwanda Bribery Index (RBI) released by Transparency International (T.I Rwanda), on Wednesday, December 7.

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The RBI is an annual publication by T.I Rwanda that aims at determining the current status of perceived corruption in Rwanda, look at the likelihood and prevalence of corruption in Rwanda.

It identifies Rwandan institutions and organizations particularly those vulnerable to corruption, assess the impact of corruption on service delivery in Rwanda, and gather concrete information on the size of bribes paid by Rwandan citizens while seeking to access a specific service.

The 2022 edition provided data on a number of indicators including bribe incidence among business people, and the proportion of persons who were asked for a bribe by public officials during the previous 12 months, among others.

It mostly used questionnaires as the instrument to capture data on bribery incidences, in addition to interviews which were conducted to complement the quantitative data in order to provide more details and testimonies on the incidence of corruption experienced by service seekers.

According to some of the report’s findings, traffic police led the public institutions in terms of the number of bribes demanded divided by number of interactions with the institution.

Here, the report noted that 16.4 percent of the people that interact with traffic police for services may be subjected to bribery demands bribery, while local government institutions followed with 10.6 per cent, and then REG came third with 10.4 per cent, and the Water and Sanitation Corporation (WASAC) came fourth with 10.2 per cent.

The report gave examples of cases of bribery that occurred this year involving the particular institutions.

Among these, T.I Rwanda cited an incident in Musanze district where some REG technicians demanded citizens to pay bribes (between Rwf 2000 to 5000) in order to get electricity meters, yet they should get them for free.

"In testimonies collected countrywide, citizens testify that they bribe WASAC staff (technicians) in order to get supplementary water meters in their homes,” the report said.

"WASAC clients also decry delays in getting water taps in their homes and repair services when water equipment gets damaged. They, therefore, end up paying bribes to speed the processes,” it added.