DCC snatches DTCB office
Officials label the move as showdown with communications ministry
Staff Correspondent
The city council of Dhaka yesterday relocated the office of Dhaka Transport Co-ordination Board (DTCB) from Mohakhali to Nagar bhaban allegedly by force and overstepping its authority. A group of Dhaka City Corporation (DCC) staffs, backed up by armed guards, confiscated documents, equipment and furniture at the DTCB office at Jamuna Setu Bhaban and hauled those to the DCC headquarters, leaving over a hundred DTCB employees dazed and in confusion. The equipment include 40 computers and 30 telephone sets. A feud has been raging between the city corporation and the communications ministry over the control of DTCB right from the beginning, a DTCB official said preferring anonymity. And, "the forceful relocation is an ugly outcome of that cold war," he noted. According to DTCB Executive Director Quamrul Islam Siddiqui, Prime Minister Khaleda Zia later ordered cancellation of the transfer move. The city father, Sadeque Hossain Khoka, on the other hand, claimed, "The communications ministry, who runs the board, told me the DTCB officials will start working at Nagarbhaban from tomorrow [today]." According to the DTCB Ordinance 2001, the DCC mayor is the chairman of DTCB Advisory Board while the communications ministry runs the board's administration. Siddiqui said, "The DCC has no legal right to transfer the office in such a manner. As the chairman of DTCB Advisory Board, the DCC mayor has no executive authority to do so." "I don't know if we will be able to recover most of the data in our computers and the important documents. Our officials don't know where and how the documents were transferred," the DTCB ED said in apparent concern. "The move has set us back by at least one year." Brushing aside the allegation of overstepping the mark, Mayor Khoka said the move was decided through several board meetings. The city council sent a letter on September 5 asking for relocation of the office to Nagarbhaban. In response, in a letter sent to the DCC the same day, the DTCB said the office shifting was not possible as it poses serious technical hazards linked to large-scale data transfer. But Siddiqui said though they had opposed the move in the meetings the DCC mayor took the initiative on his own. DTCB, the implementing agency of Dhaka Urban Transport Project (DUTP), had been housed at Nagarbhaban for two and a half-years at the initial stage of the project. In that period only 16 percent of the five-year World Bank-funded project was completed. Displeased with the snail pace, the WB asked the government to relocate the DTCB office to a different place, and thus it came to Mohakhali.
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