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Grafts galore in ADP projects

REJAUL KARIM BYRON
Many agencies, including government bodies, have been found to drain the national exchequer by misusing funds and facilities of development projects they are assigned to run.
The irregularities pursued by them include drawing tender money without actually implementing the work, procuring and supplying low
quality materials, and misusing project vehicles and other facilities, said the Implementation, Monitoring and Evaluation Division (Imed) of the planning ministry in a recent report.
The Imed report discloses blatant corruption detected during spot inspections of 289 projects implemented in fiscal years 2002 and 2003, mainly in education, power and water resources sectors, under
the Annual Development Programme (ADP). Surprisingly, the Islamic Foundation Bangladesh achieved a remarkably high profile among the project authorities found to be wallowing in cheating.
During the two-year period, a total of 1,345 ADP projects were implemented and the Imed feels similar corruption and irregularities also exist in the projects it did notFROM PAGE 1 scrutinise.
The Imed also detected an increasing trend among some project authorities to inflate project costs, abusing a government rule that allows for modifying a project if the cost escalation remains within 10 percent of the approved budget.
According to the report titled ADP Implementation Progress Review (2002-2003), the Islamic Foundation took money to construct academy buildings in Khulna and Rajshahi for training the imams. They had no scruple to show the money as spent without ever spending it.
In a special section devoted to the primary and mass education, the Imed report reveals that most of the constructions in the sector were carried out without going for any really competitive bidding. Contracts were doled out through lotteries to certain 'selected contractors', 80 percent of whom failed to meet deadlines. Forty percent of the contractors on the other hand did not get their bills paid even after completing the jobs.
Corruption appears more flagrant in construction of school buildings. In Barisal, the authorities built a new schoolhouse beside the existing two-storey building of Alekanda Government Primary School, though there was no surplus students to justify it.
In many cases, implementers made drastic modifications to approved project designs in order to obtain bigger funds. For instance, in Mymensingh, the authorities concerned undertook a scheme to convert the three-storey Jatiya Prathamik Shikkha Academy building into a six-storey one. But, instead of expanding the existing
building, they unilaterally decided to construct a new one, raising the project cost by 16 percent.
The Imed investigation also discovered the administrators of primary and mass education projects to have supplied low quality education materials like pencils, geometric kits, exercise books, etc to beneficiary schools and students. In educational institutions in Bogra, Barisal, Kushtia, Mymensingh, Jamalpur and some other areas, teaching and learning materials like scientific equipment were found to get spoilt in school storerooms, as the school management did not distribute them among the students. Computers remain unused due to lack of trainers and some even have gone out of order from lack of use.
The Imed probe found the officials of water resources ministry to be more interested in flood protection projects and least in irrigation schemes, apparently as the scope of corruption in the latter field is much higher. The ministry spends only 8.77 percent of its project funds for eight irrigation projects and as much as 61.34 percent for 22 flood-protection and river erosion projects.
In the power sector, the Imed noticed project authorities like the Dhaka Electricity Supply Authority (Desa) to have a tendency for spending unauthorised funds. The spot visits saw much of the construction works in the sector, like in the Rehabilitation, Renovation and Augmentation of Grid System project, to be of visibly poor quality.
Imed inspectors also noticed high-tension transmission lines stretched across residential areas, jeopardising household electronic goods and posing health hazard to people.