White elephants within the govt

As minister for commerce Altaf Hossain Chowdhury had seven personal staff, but now as minister without portfolio (means without work), he has acquired nine of them. Whereas as a sinecure holder he should have had skeleton staff, if any; he has in fact got two more to the total. The reason ostensibly being that he was merely filling out his ministerial quota of nine -- work or no work. That's not all; he wrote to the cabinet division for salary of one of his staff to be given with a retrospective effect in violation of the general financial rules of the government.

Another minister, that of jute and textiles, has been reportedly using nine transports from a corporation under his ministry with costs of fuel, repair and maintenance charges and salaries and allowances of the drivers being paid out of the corporation budget. As a minister he has his own paraphernalia all right. Result: while the corporation's work is badly suffering, its losses are mounting in every sense of the term. Even if we don't go into the alleged rip off in jute purchase, the misuse of nine transports by the minister is too glaring to be ignored, especially in view of the furore earlier created on the subject and the government promising appropriate action. The public outcry was given a short shrift, once the dusts settled.

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The monthly expenditure for a minister, all entitlements taken together and their average worked out stands at around Tk 1,50,000/= to the exclusion of the expenditure on nine personal staff, his TA/DA and free telephone use at home and office. The monthly fuel allowance itself is Tk 34,800/=, leave aside the corruption premium and what have you!

The pertinent question is: what is this poor cash-starved country receiving in return for the public money spent on them?