Rejoinder, our reply
Power Development Board (PDB) has sent a rejoinder to a news item published in The Daily Star on May 13 under the headline '16 town power distribution project, PDB spends Tk 271 crore without approval'. The rejoinder said the revised Development Project Proforma (DPP) was approved for the project on April 26 last year with a revised cost of Tk 426.23 crore, and Tk 300 crore had been spent till May 13. It said the Ecnec, as per recommendation of the Implementation, Monitoring and Evaluation Department (IMED), approved the revised DPP. The rejoinder also contradicted with the amount of money as stated in the report for purchasing vehicles for the project. It said original allocation for purchase of vehicles was Tk 1.35 crore and allocation in approved DPP was Tk 2.43 crore. "The vehicles were purchased within the limit of the approved allocation," it added. Our reply: The Daily Star report was based on the IMED's special investigation into the '16 town power distribution project (second phase - revised)', and the investigation report was placed before the National Economic Council (NEC) meeting on April 30. The IMED report categorically stated that the project spent money without approval of the authorities and it pointed out yearly additional spending in the project. The IMED team described such spending as 'serious violation of financial discipline' and 'irresponsibility'. "The project did not notify the Power Division or the Planning Commission about additional spending since 2000-2001, until preparing a revised project in 2004," the investigation report says. We stand by our report. However, we regret an error in the report regarding spending against purchase of vehicles. We erroneously reported that the IMED inquiry team found Tk 2.8 crore additional spending for purchase of vehicles for the project, but the actual figure was Tk 1.8 crore. The IMED report also found that PDB spent about 80 per cent more than the original allocation for purchasing cars and the cars were used by offices and persons who were not involved in the project -- such as, Prime Minister's Office, Chairman of the PDB and Power Division. Such use of project vehicles is direct violation of existing rules, the IMED report pointed out.
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