Living with Corruption

K-Man noted that as a foreigner in Egypt I might not have noticed the corruption among public officials, but I beg to differ. Maybe because my late husband was in business, or because most of my friends are either Egyptian or very long term residents, but I've seen truckloads of corruption in Egypt. Part of the problem lies in the utterly pitiful pay scale in public service. Back in the days of Nasser, when businesses all over Egypt were being nationalised, a job was promised to every university graduate, while at the same time, the universities were essentially free of charge. No country can afford to pay the wages of virtually every citizen without making these salaries miniscule.

So when I moved to Egypt in '88, there were Egyptian government employees everywhere, all making a couple of hundred pounds a month...which is quite insufficient for a family. Of course they took bribes to get their work done. I don't approve of it but I do understand it. But there is corruption in every society in most of the upper tiers, since that is the level at which people have the power to sell favours. Unfortunately necessity (that old mother of invention) promoted corruption at the lower levels where the employees were paid so little that they had to find other ways of supplementing their income, It's not found so much where a salary is sufficient to live on.