Abuse of Projects Vehicles
Govt likely to ask ministries for vehicle list
The government is likely to select 10 ministries and divisions and ask them to give details about the vehicles of the concluded development projects to check abuse of vehicles, officials said.
The ministries includes LGRD, ministries of communication, education, heath, agriculture, water resources as those enjoyed the lion’s share of the development costs. The decision was taken at an inter-ministerial meeting at the ministry of finance last month in the wake of massive irregularities in using vehicles procured under development projects.
The vehicles should be produced to the transport pool under the ministry of public administration on conclusion of the projects. But the ministries and divisions hardly followed the rules and did not return the vehicles to the transport pool.
As the practice is on the rise pushing up the public expense significantly the expenditure control wing of the ministry of finance held the meeting for devising mechanisms to curb the malpractice, said officials.
Additional secretary Jalal Ahmed presided over the meeting that also decided to urge the planning commission to send the list of concluded projects.
Many officials, however, suspect that this is just a mere bureaucratic exercise at the fag end of the present government which might not bring any expected results in curbing misuse of vehicles of development projects.
Executive director of Transparency International Bangladesh Ifterkharuzzaman said practice of abusing projects cars is an old phenomenon. The matter widely surfaced during the tenure of the last political regime, he said.
‘Everybody hoped that the present government would stop the malpractice,’ he said, adding that the practice was still on.
A finance ministry official told New Age that the present government purchased record number of cars for the transport pool on the plea that the pool could not provide necessary transports to the ministers and the public officials.
Even then the abuse of the vehicles purchased for the development projects did not reduce, he said.
He alleged that a good number of projects cars were given to the ministries and divisions for the use of ministers and secretaries. Not only the senior public officials, but also many junior officials used project cars, he said.
The government introduced interest-free car loans to bureaucrats from the joint secretary to the secretary from this year. But still abuse of projects cars by ministries and divisions continued unabated.
Courtesy of New Age
