Bangladesh Newspaper Archives
'Razzaque sees graft in safety net programmes
Thu, Jul 28th, 2011
Dhaka, July 28 — Corruption is severely hampering social safety net programmes across the country, recognises the food and disaster management minister.
"Social safety net programmes are being hampered for malpractices," Abdur Razzaque told a roundtable at the Planning Commission on Thursday.
He, however, did not specify who were behind the corruption.
"MPs, government officials, upazila chairmen and grassroots-level public representatives are responsible for implementing the programmes.
"We've taken several steps to stop the graft.
Leaks have been found even after sending money to the bank accounts of beneficiaries," Razzaque said without elaborating it.
He emphasised strengthening monitoring to uproot the corruption.
The minister suggested the Election Commission to impose more restrictions on spending money by union council polls candidates on electioneering.
"They spent a lot on the recent elections.
""Those who have spent the money will try to recover it from different projects, giving a rise to malpractices," he said.
Mentioning that the amount of aids from development partners decreased, Razzaque said, "Important sectors like power and fuel face financial crisis as the government has to spend a lot on social safety net programmes from its own coffer.
"Power and Participation Research Centre (PPRC), UNDP and the Planning Commission jointly organised the roundtable, titled 'Policy Dialogue on Social Protection in Bangladesh'.
PPRC chief and former caretaker government advisor Hossain Zillur Rahman presented the keynote paper.
He, however, echoed the minister's sentiment.
Poverty alleviation and risk tackling face new challenges due to food price hike and climate change, he said.
"Proper outcome from the projects in this regard cannot be seen even after spending $1.
64 billion a year for lack of evaluation and co-ordination, and pervasive corruption," he said.
According to Zillur, such problems are mostly seen in employment or allowance projects.
"The employment programmes have workers only on papers.
They have around 20 percent such workers," he said.
"No-one implements these social protection or safety net programmes alone.
There are politicians, local governments, ministries and MPs.
They all need to be coordinated if we want a success," he added.
Planning minister A K Khandker and UNDP country director Stefan Priesner also spoke at the programme.
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