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Cut down on foreign trips

PM instructs civil servants

Rejaul Karim Byron
Learn from the greats, and expose yourself to better work, it is often advised. So, when implementing big, state-of-the-art projects, it is prudent to go abroad and get first-hand experience of how things are done.
Government officials, however, have made it a habit of taking foreign trips for each and every project, regardless of their scale.
It is this culture that Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina yesterday
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reproached at the meeting of the Executive Committee of the National Economic Council, according to meeting sources.
"'One House, One Farm' is a poverty alleviation project through family farming. There was no need to take foreign tours as part of its implementation and yet, it was included in the proposal," she said in the meeting held at the Planning Commission premises.
When the proposal file came to Hasina, she had crossed out the foreign tour component. "The file never came back to me after that," a meeting source quoted the prime minister as saying.
"The prime minister expressed discontentment and annoyance over excessive foreign trips," Planning Minister MA Mannan told reporters after the meeting.
She gave a strong instruction -one group will go abroad once and complete all tasks, the planning minister said.
The topic came up in discussion when the revised proposal for a chancery complex in the Pakistani capital of Islamabad was placed.
The project was taken up in 2007 after the Pakistan government gifted a plot to Bangladesh in Islamabad's diplomatic zone in 2003.
In 2006, a five-member team went to Islamabad to survey the land. Then
another group went to draw up a plan and another to sign agreements with the Pakistani contractor.
When the project was first passed, its cost was Tk 29.80 crore. Now, after third revision, it is Tk 79.86 crore.
It was originally supposed to be complete by June 2010, but it could not meet the deadline due to some trouble. The new deadline was set at June 2022 and the PM has instructed that all tasks must be completed in a single trip to Islamabad.
The chancery complex, which will be similar to the one Bangladesh has in New Delhi, is expected to strengthen diplomatic and economic ties with Pakistan.