From New Age
The opposition leader, Khaleda Zia, on Monday said all corruption, irregularities, anarchy and plunder in public procurement would be investigated and the persons responsible would be brought to book if her party returned to power.
She said the power and energy sector had become ‘a haven for local and foreign plunderers’ with work orders of mega projects being given without tenders.
Khaleda, also the Bangladesh Nationalist Party chairperson, said her previous government had enacted public procurement act and public procurement rules in order to ensure transparency and accountability in public sector
purchase but the present government ignored them and passed another act giving indemnity to all acts of ‘plunder’ and turned the power sector into a ‘haven for the plunderers of the ruling party’.
The BNP chief said the government had pushed the economy to the ‘brink of bankruptcy’ by gross politicisation, tender manipulation and excessive increase in state expenditure in unproductive sectors. ‘Endless corruption in different projects prompted the World Bank and other donor agencies to stop release of funds and they are showing no interest in funding new projects,’ she said at the concluding session of the 53rd convention of the Institution of Engineers, Bangladesh, in the city.
Khaleda ridiculed the government’s claims of successes in the power sector saying the net loss in the sector was around Tk 800 crore during her rule but it rose to Tk 8,000 crore in the previous fiscal and experts projected that the loss would reach Tk 15,000 crore in the current fiscal despite fuel price hikes several times and average power generation did not increase beyond 1,000 megawatts.
She claimed that power generation during her government had increased to more than 4,000 megawatts but the incumbents were claiming that power generation had not increased by a single megawatt during the BNP rule. She said that if her successors had continued with the projects taken by her government, more 4,000 megawatts of power could have been generated by 2012.
She alleged that the incumbent government had created an ‘artificial crisis’ of power and become interested in setting up rental power plants reducing public sector power generation to 40 per cent of the total generation.
She also alleged that the ruling party-backed middlemen were given chances to plunder money through such rental plants with the government paying the price in dollar at a high rate.
Khaleda pledged for rapid and sustained measures to solve the problems in power and energy sector, ensure energy security, development of communication infrastructure, especially road, railway and waterways.
She also called for ‘national unity’ to face up to the ‘aggression’ of a ‘mighty neighbour’ on the environment, ecology, water and agriculture and referred to the Indian move to construct a dam on the River Barak and the impact of Farakka dam over past 40 years.
The opposition leader said the country was passing through a ‘grave crisis’ as democracy was in ‘danger’ and practice of regime change through fair elections had been obstructed. She called on the engineers to take part in the struggle for building a democratic and prosperous Bangladesh.
The IEB president M Nurul Huda, general secretary M Abdus Sabur and member- secretary of the convention preparation committee Mohammad Hossain also spoke at the programme.
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