56 'fake headmasters' receive govt training!
The authorities of Secondary Teachers Training Institute in Rajshahi let some 56 fake headmasters, who were taking part in a government-funded training programme giving false identities, flee from the institute yesterday.
The authorities kept them confined in a room in the institute soon after their false identities were revealed but they managed to flee with the help of institute officials, sources said.
They enrolled themselves in the training programme using fake identity as headmaster and gave false names of their schools, said the institute officials.
The six-day training programme on “teaching quality improvement” began on May 22, was scheduled to end today.
A section of unscrupulous people wanted to misappropriate the project money of about Tk 4.20 lakh that was allocated for distribution among the participants, they said.
Their attempts failed as the fake headmasters were caught a day before the end of the training.
The government is implementing the project using the fund of Asian Development Bank and SIDA.
Talking to The Daily Star, the institute Director Swapan Kumar Dutta refuted the allegation and said only the institute employee Abdul Hannan, who went into hiding soon after the incident, might have been responsible.
The fake headmasters managed to flee when the authority called the police, he said.
Before their escape, the institute took written statements from 25 fake headmasters where they confessed to their guilt, Dutta said.
All of them stated that they gave money to Hannan for participating in the training and he prepared necessary documents for their participation, he added.
Beauty Parveen, sub-inspector of Rajpara Police Station, said the institute director called the police seeking help in the matter.
“After we went there, the director told us that the fake persons were forgiven and we returned at 3:00pm,” Beauty added.
A three-member committee was formed with the training course coordinator Selina Afroze as its chairman to investigate the matter.
Selina told The Daily Star that she was not involved in selecting the teachers for the training. “They were selected by district education offices concerned,” she said.
Some 84 headmasters from across the Rajshahi division joined the training on May 22, said the officials.
On Tuesday, Selina came to know from an anonymous caller that there are fake headmasters among the participants.
Based on the phone call, the institute authority yesterday morning began to scrutinise the list of participants with district education offices concerned.
By noon, they found some 56 participants were not headmasters and the schools they mentioned had never existed.
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