In one of the offices of the Presidency of the Republica is being prepared new tool that can monitor and track access to public services in the country in timeaccording to the Investigative Unit of EL TIEMPO.
It is, therefore, a program capable of processing data and evaluating the lack of coverage in basic services by indicating whether there is a possible source of corruption. The case takes on special relevance, since the tool would come into operation at a time when Colombia is going through a crisis in key sectors, such as energy and natural gas..
Nariño House.
‘Radar’
According to the document from the project ‘Corruption Radar and Economic, Cultural and Social Rights’, which advances the Transparency Secretariat of the Presidency of the Republic, headed by Andrés Idárragathere was already a first approach to the results that this new tool yields and that left serious concerns.
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Indeed, In a scan of 1,102 municipalities analyzed by ‘Radar’, only 350 presented low levels of corruption. And it was warned that the Amazon region is the territory in which the greatest risk exists.
In fact, it is noted that the situation is critical and that institutional capacity is deficient, Therefore, illicit activity could increase in the provision of public services given the little or no presence of the State in these territories..
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Business corruption
An example: Cumaribo
The ‘Radar’ information that EL TIEMPO was able to access for the first time, It also shows a list of the municipalities with the highest corruption results.
The tool works in a scale from 0 to 60where the higher the value recorded, the greater the possibility of corruption and violation of the rights of access to public services.
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Cumaribo (Vichada)
An example of this is the municipality of Cumariboin the department of Vichada, with nearly 73,000 inhabitants, which presented the highest level on this scale. According to the document, “from 30 points or more ‘Radar.SDP’ could say that there is a high violation in the access and quality of public services“.
In this municipality, 750 kilometers from Puerto Carreño, The possible corruption score recorded by ‘Radar’ was precisely 60. The levels of institutional capacity in Cumaribo were also the poorest within the group of hundreds of municipalities analyzed by the tool.
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In May 2024, the Public Force carried out a joint operation in which laboratories dedicated to the production of cocaine in this municipality were destroyed and, in 2023, the director of the National Protection Unit (UNP), Augusto Rodríguezdenounced a ‘narcorruta’ from Cumaribo to Villavicencio.
The case of the Caribbean region
In northern Colombia, the results of ‘Radar’ concluded that “On the Atlantic coast there are high levels of violations in the provision of quality energy services and incidence of cases of hidden corruption“.
Saint Martha
In this area, Saint Martha It was the territory with the highest levels of violation in the provision of electricity service throughout the department of Magdalena. The indicator almost doubled what the program considers as high levels of corruption and violation: 57.5%.
Now, it is expected that ‘Radar’ can become fully operational in the coming weeks and that, even with the tool, new cases of corruption can be avoided, such as, for example, the one that occurred in the National Unit for Disaster Risk Management (UNGRD).
PORTFOLIO
*With information from EL TIEMPO – INVESTIGATIVE UNIT
