Why a luxury car?
The approval for purchase of 440 Pajero Jeep for the upazila chairmen is a glaring example of misuse of public funds. Still a pauper country, Bangladesh can ill afford to expend such huge amounts of hard earned foreign currency for the symbol or spectre of power the chairmen hold. As if when they will come to Dhaka this will be proper to show off their status, as also to the village folks who elected them for their development, not to get amazed! Their seat of work is in the upazilas, the headquarters of the rural unions/areas where there are hardly roads for easy and safe ride, and obviously this will cause unabated drainage of money for the upkeep of this inordinately pricey vehicle. This is a sheer unproductive outlay.
It seems the government led by Sheikh Hasina also runs by the theory, 'There is no death of money'. When, among myriad other colossal problems, millions stay in the shanties and nothing can be done to salvage them from their wretched condition of living, when sanitation and drinking water cannot be provided to them and when many of the primary schools do not have black boards and benches for the students for want of money, how is it morally proper to exhaust public funds only for the sake of status of the chairmen? To work for the rural folks, the chairmen do not need such big luxury vehicles, except for luxury ride with “sango-pango” and family members.
Go to West Bengal which is economically better off than us and see what sort of locally made cards their ministers use, let alone their local body chiefs.
For all latest news, follow The Daily Star's Google News channel.
Comments