The Socio-Cultural Context of Corruption in EEPCO: The Case of Sebeta District

Abstract

This study is aimed at investigating the practice of corruption in the energy
sector of Ethiopia to identify the implications on the process of development.
The target is to trace the major glitch in the process of service delivery to the
public in a focused community. Basically, a qualitative method was applied
for the investigation; and observations, document analysis, focus group
discussion, key informants’ interviews, and a mini survey were the
techniques used; and the information from each source was sufficiently
triangulated in the discussion. One community, Sebeta Town, was selected
for the investigation and within the setting, two subcommunities were
focused and 75 individuals were considered as informants. They constitute
officials and resident households randomly selected from subcommunities
for internal comparisons. The group includes well educated respondents that
can speculate issues from normative and ethical perspectives and all are
reasonably matured people with a lot of experience and stories about the
facts in life. Structured interview questions and observation grids were
developed and applied for gathering the data. In addition to the qualitative
techniques employed for the analysis, Z-test is applied to determine whether
there are significant differences between groups. It was found out that
whereas the organization is the key for development of the nation and has
been contributing a lot in this regard, corruption is becoming a challenge as
it is widely practiced and even protected, and getting stronger from time to
time in the recent years. Bribery, patronage, and pillaging are the major
manifestations of the phenomenon in the community under investigation. It
was concluded that corruption has been operating in a multifaceted and
pluralistic mode through informal deals in the sector and the community
under investigation, resulting in inefficiency and adversely affecting
development. In specific terms, the system in the particular case punished
honesty and rewarded lawlessness. It is clear that the sector is one of the key
areas of focus for the overall development in the country; it cannot be left
alone to go as it may. Therefore, at policy level, intensive mass education,
privatization of some of the services of the sector, and at the corporation
level, ensuring transparency in service delivery, focusing on quality in
staffing and relevant remunerations of employees, and defining code of
conduct to foster personal responsibilities in decision making were among
the recommendations