When will pleasure trips end?
IN a country where thousands of crores of taka is siphoned off from banks without so much as whimper from the government, spending a sum of ten crores by Rajuk on wasteful trips, euphemistically called study tours, may look like pittance. But the issue is more fundamental than the sum involved. It is the planned and calculated manner of misusing public money by persons in high places of a government institution that is the point at issue. And unless cognizance is taken and the matter rectified through severe administrative actions after thorough auditing, wasting public money will assume an endemic proportion.
Even a person who has himself availed of the benefits of such pleasure trips terms these as wasteful expenditures for purposeless tours. And no less than the parliamentary standing committee on housing ministry has called these as trips for pleasure shopping having no use for the general public. But all that they have done is to reprimand the relevant authorities since the standing committees have no power to do anything more.
Merely reprimanding is not enough. We feel that such waste of public money borders on criminality and must be taken cognizance of by the government. Unfortunately, the situation of Rajuk, we are sure, is fairly representative of the situation obtaining in most, if not all, of the ministries and department of the government. We are used to seeing bloated official entourages of high profile delegations.
Not only must the errant officers be punished much of the blame for such waste must also be shouldered by the approving authorities.
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