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Wednesday, March 29, 2006

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News Analysis
Tampering with meters and figures
Shamsul Huq Zahid
3/29/2006
 

          Though it may sound incredible, the officials and employees of the Dhaka Electric Supply Authority (DESA) had eaten up Tk. 100 million from government exchequer as incentive bonus against cooked-up figures of systems loss between 1991- 92 and 2000-01.
The Office of the Comptroller and Auditor General (CAG) in a recent report pointed out massive irregularities, including the issue of incentive bonus. Though the information relates to the recent past, it is revealing as well as shocking.
Enraged by massive irregularities in the DESA, the Public Accounts Committee (PAC) of the Jatiya Sangsad in a meeting held late last week asked the DESA authorities to recover incentive bonus money and take punitive actions against persons who prepared the cooked-up figures.
There is yet another interesting part of the CAG findings where the DESA men successfully applied their ingenuity to torpedo a government initiative for reducing systems loss and continue with their illegal earning.
The government imported 20,000 electronic meters at a cost of Tk. 500 million in 2000-01 for installation of the same in the premises of the subscribers who use substantial amounts of power. But, according to the CAG audit report, those meters were given to subscribers who use below 500 units of electricity and are not interested in tampering with meters. Thus, an amount of Tk 500 million was wasted.
The subscribers who are feeling the heat of the summer days as load-shedding has reached the record level would obviously appreciate the good work of the PAC. The parliamentary committees are supposed to act as eyes and ears of the parliament. Unfortunately, these committees, barring a few, of all the parliaments constituted since 1990-91 have belied expectations of the people and remained inactive.
But there are ample reasons for being sceptic about the implementation of the PAC directives. It will possibly be a fair bet that the DESA authorities will not act on the directives. The statement, published in a national daily quoting PAC meeting sources, of the DESA chairman would rather strengthen such an apprehension. The chairman reportedly told the meeting that he had surrendered (to the high-handed officials and employees of DESA) and that he had nothing to do since his hands were tied. The statement itself spoke volumes about the helplessness of the DESA chief executive in the face of pressure tactics used by the dishonest officials and employees of that organisation.
The rampant irregularities in DESA are known to all. The disclosure about the incentive bonus makes it clearer why the DESA men are vehemently opposed to the government plan to corporatise it. The trade unions of this power distribution company have been organising rallies and processions against the government move. Why should not they? Who does want to lose the opportunity to earn 10 to 15 times more than his or her regular monthly salary through irregular means when authorities concerned prefer to remain as passive onlookers?
The CAG audit report mentioned about irregularities in the billing system, tampering with meters and failure to reduce systems loss or power theft, to be precise. The subscribers of DESA are quite familiar with all those crimes committed by the DESA people with total impunity. They are also witnesses to how low-wage earning meter readers of DESA are becoming owners of multi-storied buildings in Dhaka. One may, however, ask a pertinent question: Why should the DESA people be singled out when similar incidents are taking place in most government agencies?
True. There are many other government offices where official records are tampered regularly to embezzle government funds in various forms. Even the private sector is not lagging behind. Some weeks back, this daily ran a story how owners of some 20 apparel units had eaten up government cash incentive worth Tk. 173 million, allegedly, abusing bond facility. Though the apparel units in question were not entitled to the cash incentive, they had availed themselves of the same in connivance with some dishonest officials of a couple of private commercial banks. The National Board of Revenue (NBR) officials had earlier also detected cases of abuse of the bond facility. There may be many more of such incidents which have escaped the notice of the NBR men whose track record, however, is also not above question.
There is hardly any country -- developed or developing -- in the world where government spending is totally fault-free. In the case of developed world, abuse of government funds is the minimum but the rate of the same goes up when it comes to the developing countries. But the extent of misappropriation of government funds in Bangladesh is very high and the situation is getting worse day by day. Small wonder that everyone is trying to get his or her share in the pie when poor governance remains to be a perennial problem. But the situation cannot or should not be allowed to continue the way it is now. Someone has to start the cleansing act from somewhere. It could be the DESA to start with.

 

 
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