Low salaries are leading cause of corruption, poll

The leading cause of widespread corruption in Moldova are the low salaries paid to public sector employees, - this is the opinion of 51.1 percent of the respondents of an on-line poll conducted on the website of the Center for Combating Economic Crimes and Corruption (CCCEC), Info-Prim Neo reports. 17.3 percent of the respondents think the spreading of the phenomenon is caused by the fact that functionaries act in self-interest or pursue interests contradicting their positions. 8.5 percent of the respondents put the blame on the specificity of the population's mentality. At the same time, 5.9 percent of the respondents believe the phenomenon is spreading because of the inefficiency of the judicial system, while 5.5 percent think the absence of strict control is to blame. Other options included the moral crisis of the population in the transition period, the inefficiency of the anticorruption policies, and the imperfect legislation. The poll was conducted in the period September-December 2008 and is based on the answers of 307 visitors to the site www.cccec.md.