Noman Mosharef :
Election Commission’s (EC) three projects — Identification System for Enhancing Access to Services (IDEA), a plan to provide smart cards to the voters, Strengthening and Capacity Development of Election Commission Secretariat (SCDECS), and Use of Electronic Voting Machine in order to Apply ICT in Election System (EVM) — move on snail ‘s pace.
Of them, IDEA project started in 2011, while EVM and SCDECS in 2018.
According to EC’s work paper, the total cost of the IDEA project has been estimated at TK 1696.64 crore of which Tk 7,098 crore has been projected to lone as foreign aid. Tk 2756 crore have been spent until December of the FY 2020-2021 which was 27.56 per cent of the Revised Annual Development Program (RADP) allocation.
On the other hand, from July, 2011 to February, 2021, Tk 1,399 crore have been spent under the IDEA project which was 82.47 per cent of the total project expenditure.
Moreover, a total of 6.58 crore smart NID cards had been personalized until February 2021. Besides, 5.30 crore smart NID cards distributed and 80 lakh smart NID cards distributions are going on under the IDEA project.
Under the IDEA project, 516 upazillas’ have been renderings NID registration service by using virtual private network (VPN) technology facilities. Without increasing the expenditure of the IDEA project, it has been extended from January 2021 to June 30, 2021. Besides, Executive Committee of the National Economic Council (ECNEC) approved another IDEA-2 project in November, 2020 to continue the EC’s smart NID project with estimated cost of Tk 1950.50 crore . And the tenure of the project is from July, 2021 to June, 2025.
On the other hand, the total cost of the EVM project has been estimated for Tk 3,825.34 crore where the project implementation deadline has been set from July 2018 to June, 2023. Until February 2021, Tk 2,388 crore has been spent which was 75.47 per cent of total allocation.
Under this project EC had bought 1.5 lakh EVM machine. Of them 82,000 EVM had been sent to local level and 34,000 machine kept in EC’s warehouse. Besides, EC has planning to buy more 34,000 EVM machine in this fiscal year (2020-2021).
Furthermore, Tk 362 crore has been estimated for EC’s another SCDECS project. The implementation tenure of the project has been set from July, 2018 to June, 2023. Under this project till February, 2021, Tk 3.2 crore has been spent which was 9.87 per cent of total allocation.
Five officials from EC Secretariat and field level had completed Masters Course in Procurement and Supply Management (MPSM) under this project. Besides, 65 officials had joined in English Language Skill Development course while 100 officials attended to Public Procurement Act 2006 (PPA-2006) and Public Procurement Rules 2008 (PPR-2008) training courses.
When asked, why these projects’ progress is slow, EC’s Join Secretary and Director (Public Relations) SM Asaduzzaman said, SCDECS project is actually training base. There was schedule that the officials would have got their training abroad. But, the Covid-19 pandemic has been interrupted it, as all international flights have been cancelled.
He said, when the situation will become normal, the activities of the projects will be implement properly and sincerely.
