Graft galore in 900 MPO-listed institutions

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Saturday, 28 January 2012

Author / Source : Siddiqur Rahman Khan

DHAKA, JAN 27: The Prime Minister’s Office has asked the education ministry to find out and penalize those officials and employees found involved in the process for giving salary from the exchequer to the teachers and employees of nearly 900 schools and colleges flouting the rules. In Bangladesh most of the schools, madrassas and colleges are established by private initiative and later the government pays salary to the teachers and employees in the form of Monthly Pay Order (MPO) upon application by these. There are nearly 5 lakh teachers and employees engaged in 28,000 non-government post-primary schools, madrassas and college across the country, which enjoy the MPO which costs the exchequer about Tk 4,800 crore yearly.
Officials of the Prime Minister’s Office have said that the ministry has been asked to find out the corrupt officials and to stop MPO if any corruption and misuse of government fund is detected.  
Education minister Nurul Islam Nahid on Thursday said that a committee headed by additional secretary SM Golam Faruque has been formed to probe the allegations of corruption in the MPO in respect of a total of 291 educational institutions (220 schools and 71 colleges). All these institutions were given MPO in between 1990 and 2004. “If the committee finds the allegations to be true, MPO will be cancelled.”
In the case of 555 colleges, which were MPO-listed between 1992 and 2002, the minister said that another committee is investigating separately.
Officials in the education ministry and the Directorate of Secondary and Higher Education (DSHE) said that all the 555 intermediate colleges were upgraded to bachelors’ degree colleges and the additional number of teachers and employees had been getting MPO. “The top culprits involved in the process include officials at the Bangladesh Bureau of Educational Information and Statistics, DSHE and the ministry but most of them have either gone to retirement or transferred to other ministries,” said a former director general of the DSHE.
A formal allegation was filed with the Anti-Corruption Commission (ACC) against some officials of DSHE and the ministry in early 2008, he said.
Investigation conducted by The Independent has found that in late 2008, the ACC had started probing the corruption allegations but in May 2009 the corruption watchdog refused to probe it and the file was sent back to the education ministry.

An ACC letter of May 5, 2009 reads: ‘The last meeting of the commission has decided that the ACC will not probe into the corruption allegations, rather the matter will be sent to the ministry concerned.’ Signed by ACC director Abul Kashem Fakir, the letter said ‘There was huge financial loss to the government for giving salary from the state-exchequer to the teachers and employees.
The colleges were upgraded violating the rules of the education ministry and the education directorate.’