BRIBERY AND CORRUPTION
ARE PART AND PARCEL
OF SOCIAL FABRIC
Rajan Yatawara laments the extent to which bribery and corruption
have become a part of society’s fabric. Savithri Rodrigo
realises that we all make compromises.

t a recent forum, the President of the Sri Lanka Economic Association proclaimed that corruption hampered the country’s growth significantly each year. This observation is nothing new… such comments have been made by many others ad nauseam. Despite the volumes of words written and spoken, the issue has become something of a travesty – bribery and corruption, it appears, have become synonymous with Sri Lanka.

Former Hayleys Chairman Rajan Yatawara says that bribery has become a loose concept. “A gift is a token of appreciation given by one party for help granted where nobody else’s interest is affected. However, anything that is given for a favour that is granted at the expense of another can be termed a bribe – and that constitutes even the gift of a hamper,” he opines. And Yatawara claims that Hayleys is one company where bribery and corruption were non-existent – a track record that he and his team maintained over a 40-year career.

“This is a trait that I inherited from my father,” he says of Yatawara Snr., a doctor. “He believed in working solely for the education given and salary paid by the state. He put his heart and soul into this, and his biggest joy was doing his best. Once, he performed a dangerous surgical procedure on a poor farmer in a remote village and that man, in gratitude, arrived at our doorstep with six pineapples. Even though my father refused to accept the gift many times, the man insisted. Eventually, my father became so angry that he gave the farmer a knife and asked him to eat every single pineapple! That was one of my first lessons in doing my job to my utmost for whatever remuneration and not expecting anything ‘on the side’ from the beneficiary of the service,” Yatawara recalls.

He also remembers returning the very first hamper he received when he joined Hayleys. “However, I couldn’t return the second one – so, I had to use my own money and purchase the equivalent of the goods in the hamper (which I could ill afford!) and send it to the person who gifted it to me,” he reveals.

Yatawara maintains that simple bribery becomes compound corruption at an unacceptable cost to the consumer when politicians and public officials are bribed. “When a gratuitous payment exceeds a certain threshold, there is a significant additional cost to an employer – in the absence of a production base – which is then passed on to the general populace,” he explains.

While Sri Lanka is more commercialised now, with most of the economy monopolised by the Government, ample opportunities are created for rampant corruption. “Unless there is transparency created down the line – beginning with government tenders and the establishment of independent legal bodies right up to a divorcing of business from politics – we cannot stem this. Bribery and corruption have now become near-endemic,” he laments.

However, Yatawara points out that brib­ery and corruption are not unique to Sri Lanka. “It’s ubiquitous. Even the oil world functions on macro bribery. Corruption in some countries is more rife than in others, but that doesn’t make it right. To me, it simply seems that Sri Lanka is catching up with the rest of the world – but with an economy that can’t absorb it,” he avers.

Saddened by a lack of follow-up action on the plethora of bribery and corruption scandals reported virtually weekly in the media, Yatawara says that the onus of eliminating these twin evils should not be entirely in the hands of the corporate sector. With the Global Compact now being adopted by more corporates, he believes that organisations such as Transparency International and aid organisations can tighten their grip on both the public and private sectors by virtue of requiring transparent transaction mechanisms. He claims that Hayleys has been affected financially because it did not succumb to the temptations of bribery and corruption.

According to its erstwhile chief: “I have seen Hayleys sidelined because we refused to pay somebody for a tender or contract. Looking at LMD’s ‘Most Respected’ list, it is disappointing that Hayleys is not at the top – because I firmly believe that to be the most respected, you must have an unblemished record… and shunning bribery and corruption completely forms the core of that record.”