Staff Reporter :
Road Transport and Highways Division Secretary Mohammad Nazrul Islam on Monday said, action will be taken against the engineers and officials of Roads and Highways Department if they are found involved in corruption.
“We will assess the report of Anti-Corruption Commission on building sub-standard roads to misappropriate public money. Everyone will be punished if found guilty,” the Secretary said.
Nazrul Islam said this at a press conference in the Secretariat on Monday.
“I received the report yesterday. The report did not mention anyone’s name specifically. However, the report has logic and I am not denying it,” he said.
The report alleged that the officials of the department act in collusion with influential persons and contractors to violate the terms of tender.
Listing the stages of road construction where corruption often takes place, the anti-graft watchdog recently sent a letter with 21 recommendations to the secretary of Cabinet Division.
Meanwhile, the Secretary said, the government would repair dilapidated roads and highways across the country by June. “The condition of highways would be developed by June and mentionable progress of the work will be visible by April,” he said.
“We have set the work plan keeping monsoon factor in mind. But large projects would take two or three years,” he said.
The secretary said Road Transport and Highways Division has attained hundred percent success in implementing annual development programme in the last five years consistently.
“We are working with utmost sincerity to keep up the success in the current fiscal too,” he said.
Nazrul Islam said floods and heavy rains have caused damages to many portion of the country’s highways.
The division has taken different programmes to bring the highways in normal condition side by side taking up immediate measures to keep those operational, he said.
He said, adding some 23 monitoring teams of road transport and bridges ministry have been overseeing the programmes.
