Staff Reporter :
Deputy Education Minister Mohibul Hasan Chowdhury on Thursday said that the administrative work relating to education is extremely centralised, causing immense sufferings to the people of the educational institutions.
“If anybody wants to open a school in Panchagarh, the entrepreneurs will have to come to Dhaka for minister’s signature. This task was assigned to the education board earlier. But we have taken this task to prevent corruption. Have the expenses reduced? No. How difficult it is to get pass for the entry into the Secretariat. I also faced it before getting the flag as a minister,” he said.
Mohibul said this while addressing a discussion meeting on ‘Education Budget: Trends and Expectation’ organised by Campaign for Popular Education (CAMPE) and Education Watch in a city hotel in the capital.
“A file is put up in the Secretariat through lobbying. The lobby starts in the education board and then at the Secretariat level and finally it goes to the minister. This model is highly centralised. We have to get rid of this. We need massive decentralization,” he noted.
The deputy minister also said that accountability should be ensured in the affairs of finance and efficiency in education management.
“We often focus our attention to the financial corruption but we have deficiencies in skill monitoring,” he added.
Highlighting the challenges of financial allocation for education sector, he said, “Budget allocation for education is a challenge. But my three years experiences taught me that proper utilisation of the allocation is a big challenge.”
