Editorial
Choicest plots to ministers and MPs!
Outright abuse of elective offices
We are surprised to learn that a large number of ministers, state ministers, ruling party MPs and other favourites are to get allotments of premier government land in the posh Gulshan-Banani and Uttara enclaves. But our surprise turned into a shock the other day when the Minister for Works and Housing Mirza Abbas quipped in response to a newsman's query: what's wrong if a minister gets a plot? Our natural reaction to this will be that a minister and MP were elected to serve the people not themselves.Need we state the obvious about a whole lot of perks and privileges going with the positions of ministers, state ministers and MPs already? They have duty-free cars, and not long ago, we also witnessed salary increases effected for them, just to mention two of the latest additions to their package of remuneration and facilities. The BNP government has been at it for quite a while now without apparently recognising how much the ministers and MPs already have in term of acquired real assets. We suggest that you just reassess their 'needs' vis-a-vis those who have genuine necessity for and a natural claim to such land allotment. This is highly disgusting and immoral. This tendency of utilising elective offices to take extraordinary advantage of public property which is but an outright denial of the same to people who have genuine need and demand for it, had in the past blighted many governments' image beyond repair. And it even caused their doom. During the AL government there was a smack of similar spoils system. However, it goes to their credit that they stopped short of allotting premier plots to party favourites in the face of strident public criticism. We urge the BNP government to be sensitive to public feelings about sweeping grant of favours, lest it appears as something of an act of expropriation.
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