The Parliamentary Standing Committee on Environment, Forest and Climate Change has acquainted citizens with yet one more instance of how public resources are being squandered in the name of project implementation. The project in question aims to have trees planted on 76,000 hectares of land in 600 villages, the aim being to bring about a qualitative change in the lives of no fewer than 40,000 people.
The shock is in knowing that even before the project has got underway a lot of money has been lost for reasons that officials related to the project have not been able to explain. No less than Tk. 57 crore has already been spent. In the last 14 months, there has been nothing to show that the project has been inaugurated or has made any degree of progress.
The question which now needs answering is how this amount of Tk. 57 crore has been spent or why. It is a five-year, Tk. 1,500 crore- project, with a large segment of the money coming from the World Bank in loans and the remainder generated through public funding in the country.
In the more than a year which has gone by since the project commenced in July last year, those entrusted with responsibility for the implementation of the project have not been able to select the areas where the afforestation will be undertaken. But, yes, officials have attended a number of training sessions abroad, have purchased five cars at Tk. 2.5 crore and hired five more at Tk. 10 lakh a month.
The parliamentary committee has expressed its dismay, especially with project officials unable to explain how Tk. 57 crore was spent without the project at all getting underway. Such behaviour, says the committee, is not unacceptable.
Of course it is not acceptable. But what is of more importance is that everyone and anyone who has been involved in the scam --- for scam it is --- should be grilled further by the committee before the arm of the law takes its course. Furthermore, the ministry of forest and environment must explain why it scrapped the project evaluation committee set up earlier. Officials of the ministry were unable to explain why the PEC was done away with.
It is here that the parliamentary standing committee needs to assert its authority through going for a thorough examination of the project. What has happened here is a gross instance of corruption and negligence. It should be for the committee to delve deep into the issue, identify those responsible and suggest the penalties for the criminality engaged in.
Corruption destroys a country. A lack of transparency undermines governance. An absence of accountability militates against the traditions of democratic behaviour. The report by the Parliamentary Standing Committee on Environment, Forest and Climate Change should now be a reason for a reassertion of the pluralistic values we have always subscribed to. Anything less can only spell grave troubles for the State in the near future.
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