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Comment by Q_the_Novice | Hacker News Reader

I'm from South Africa and this simply demonstrates the extent of corruption within our government departments. It is not uncommon for government departments to inflate tender budgets so as to benefit from kickbacks. I'm appalled by such such acts, firstly as a South African citizen and secondly as a hard working web developer.

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And yet, this sounds amateurish compared to the exact same scandal in Italy, but on a national scale: the "official" tourism portal: http://www.italia.it/en/home.html.

It had been calculated that direct and indirect costs of the project summed up to about 140M€ over the years.

At the time, someone put up a dedicated blog on the subject: http://scandaloitaliano.wordpress.com/

The WSJ was on it: http://online.wsj.com/article/SB121969807244970447.html

It even won a wikipedia entry: http://translate.google.it/translate?hl=en&sl=it&u=h...

This sort of blatant corruption is not uncommon, unfortunately. 2 years back my home country's government spent about $600,000 on Facebook pages:

http://www.themalaysianinsider.com/malaysia/article/tourism-...

It gets even better, the company that designed the website doesn't even have its own website: http://letlaka.co.za/.

Can you blame them? Have you seen how much websites cost?

Malaysian here! So glad you bring this up!!

I'm from SA as well; this is plain and simple corruption.

It's ridiculous that even with this type of thing happening openly, no opposition party can beat the ruling ANC. We can just hope Ramphele's Agang party will know how to use this type of thing against them.

I can commiserate with you.

I am from India and my college, a govt. college, had roads in college dug out twice every year and had it rebuilt. Later I figured they cited the reason "rain ruined the pathways" :P

My college, being an engineering college, ran its server through some 1 room it firm from the city. I cannot post the link to my college website(It's a shame in the name of websites. I am already ashamed) and that firm doesn't have one. Later I figured that firm's owner(only employee of the firm) was director's relative. Tender was 27 lakh(1 lakh INR is roughly $2000) INR an year.

We didn't have campus wide wired Internet, just a few wireless access points(total 3-4) and nothing in hostel. Later I figured the tender ran in lakhs annually.

There were few permanent faculty members. There was an open rate going for temporary faculty. You pay 30-40% your per diem(or per class) that is approved by Central Govt of India(yes, it was not a state govt college), to college bosses - directors, HOD etc. Later I came to know that the commission went up the ladder till Delhi.

We agitated, we went to the press. Press came to out college. You know what was the news next day - "* college students ran amok".."property damaged".... "They were demonstrating against exam results". Ever damn news paper that came and every damn TV channel that came that day. And nothing bloody else. (Yes, in EEE branch 21 students were failed and everyone of them deserved the fail grade and we never ever fg talk about it during entire day).

Some seniors(we were in first year at that time) even went till Delhi and they couldn't meet anyone. They left the memo with the peon of PMO. Of course no one heard anything.

There's no press, no judiciary here. It's a system that just runs and will be a catastrophe it tempered from either darker side or the brighter side.

But it seems, that's al right because over the time I mellowed down too and the time police asks for some money to lodge a FIR I don't hesitate. Fortunately I have gelled with the system real well.

I'm not sure if you're aware that lakhs (and crore) are not used outside of India... for an international audience it's clearer to write something like "2,700,000 INR" or "2.7 million rupees".

Please be assured that I am aware of this and hence the conversion I've mentioned in 3rd paragraph last line.

If someone reads the comment he/she must have seen that, I have reasons to believe you didn't either(kidding :P). So, they would know what is one lakh INR in dollars(roughly). But yes, they would now know the count in one go. My bad.

AAMOF I should have rather mentioned the $ amount which I can't now.

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