I am not sure the incentives are aligned.

those people fixing the roads are incentivized to do the work cheaply so they can skim more “off the top”

And you still need to fight corruption to some level or it will come to a point where there’s more skimming than work being done

>those people fixing the roads are incentivized to do the work cheaply

this incentive exists with or without corruption

cheaply as in not meeting standards

without corruption you could do a shitty job once and then you won’t get another contract because you did a shit job

with corruption the quality of the work won’t matter so in the extreme case you can deliver nothing at all and you’ll still keep getting contracts - In my country we call this being “plugged in”

Exactly, sounds inherently unsafe and the work is only done superficially to keep more EU funds coming (like in Hungary).