Italian Premier Silvio Berlusconi on Thursday launched a drive to stamp out corruption in the civil service.
The premier said Italy had a longstanding problem with corruption among civil servants, partly because of the size of its state administration.
''There is a price to be paid for a sprawling, bureaucratic and bloated public administration like ours,'' he said, unveiling a new anti-corruption task force.
''Corruption has age-old roots and has taken on a pathological and endemic form which cannot be tolerated and which we aim to root out,'' the premier told a news conference with Civil Service Minister Renato Brunetta.
Berlusconi said the government's new Anti-Corruption and Transparency Service would aim, among other things, to ''effectively map out corruptions risks and carry out an in-depth probe into European Union funds''.
He said the task force would have an ''intelligence-gathering rather than policing role'' and would save millions of euros in taxpayers' money.
It would seek to produce ''a modernised, digitalised and transparent public administration,'' he said.
Berlusconi said he was familiar with the problems of administrative corruption because of his early experiences as a young construction entrepreneur in Milan.
He said he had to stop building in Milan ''because you couldn't build anything (there) unless you went (to officials) with a cheque in your mouth''.
''This, fortunately, occurred many years ago,'' he added.
Berlusconi is relying on Brunetta to push through the kinds of reforms which have been announced by successive governments only to make little impact.
The feisty minister has already hit headlines for a campaign against ''slackers''.
Last week statistics were released showing that sick days were sharply down following Brunetta's move to cut pay for suspected malingerers.
Brunetta said the rate of absenteeism had been cut by 45% and ''by the end of the year we will effectively have 50,000 more workers'' without new hirings.
As part of the drive, Brunetta said turnstiles like those at soccer stadiums would be installed at his ministry to show when staff entered and left their offices.
Berlusconi quipped that news of the move had already produced a visible result.
''The surrounding bars are already empty,'' he said.
