Editorial
Dealing with housing corruption
Bring corrupt NHA men and their clients to justice
The National Coordination Committee on combating corruption and serious crimes has been doing an appreciable job in dealing with institutionalised corruption. Its efforts to track down wrongdoing in such organisations as Rajuk and Titas Gas have been welcomed all over the country. It then follows that it is now time for the National Housing Authority to be taken to task. That much becomes clear in light of the inquiries already made by the task force of the NCC. What the inquiries have revealed is staggering, and naturally too given the fact that individuals as young as two-year old children have become the proud owners of residential plots. Such dismal realities only hold up yet once more the degree of corruption that has for years undermined the integrity of institutions, to a point where the nation as a whole now faces the uphill task of clawing back to a semblance of order.
The plots that are being talked about, as many as 904 at this point, were originally meant for citizens without access to privileges. And what is it that the NHA is guilty of? The list is as intriguing as it is infuriating. Officials of the National Housing Authority, in collusion with their favoured clients, conveniently changed the master plans relating to the housing plots in question by not only not giving them to the deserving but also helping those who bribed them in acquiring plots beyond the specifications governing the plots. A major casualty in all this wheeling and dealing was land earlier earmarked as space for the community, namely, parks, playgrounds, lakes and graveyards. Add to that the matter of the multiplicity of plots granted to some people. It is this multiplicity which explains how even babies are today on the list of people who own plots for residential purposes. And since one corrupt deal quickly leads to another, it is small wonder that some of the plot owners felt little compunction in encroaching on land, once they came by their questionably acquired plots, not within their boundaries.
We will expect swift and decisive action to be taken against the corrupt officials of the National Housing Authority. It is surely welcome that they will be compelled to cough up the wealth they have so far acquired through illegal means. But, as we have said earlier in our comments on the corruption in other organisations, an additional measure of penalising the corrupt in the interest of justice is called for. For the authorities to repossess resources they have lost is fine. But those who have indulged in such criminality should not be permitted to go free by merely surrendering their ill-gotten wealth. And may we also suggest that the beneficiaries of the NHA officials' corrupt dealings be also brought before the law because of their contributions to the scandal?
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