Corruption in the communications ministry

The project originally approved in 1998 started being implemented in 2000 with an estimate of Tk 192 crore. Four years on, ECNEC's approval was sought for a revised estimate of Tk 349 crore. There were sufficient grounds to question the cost overrun which the ECNEC did, but only nominally, because a revised budget of Tk 281 crore was okayed in any case. The right time to put a brake on overexpenditure slid past the grip.

The Implementation, Monitoring and Evaluation Department (IMED) of the Planning Ministry conducted the investigation and found irregularities every step of the way. Land price was hiked fourfold in three years, the dominance of incompetent contractors meant complete lack of competition and the resultant quality of road construction was extremely poor.

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The communications ministry has a track record of corruption and malpractice in terms of allegations levelled against it instead of convictions handed to the offenders, though. The CNG scandal has been much talked about. The parliamentary standing committee on the communications ministry interminably took up the issue, formed a sub-committee to report on it but nothing more could be heard by way of follow up action.

The government has been in the denial mode whenever corruption charges were levelled against some ministries and highlighted in the media. As the newspapers published reports on high incidence of corruption they were invariably put in the dock for maligning the nation's image in the outside world. Now here is a damning report on corruption of a particular ministry by none other than the government's Implementation, Monitoring and Evaluation Department (IMED). We look at it as a test case for the government's bona fides in dealing with corruption within itself. The media, the country and people are all waiting to see what the government does about one of its own agency's findings on corruption.