A media report on Sunday said that an 11-member delegation of the Food Ministry is due to go on a ten-day training tour of the UK and Turkey from March 8 but no one knows the schedule and budget yet, raising questions about the need for the trip. Meanwhile, the government has also put on hold all foreign trips by its ministries and divisions for the pandemic, which has yielded savings of worth about Tk 2,500 crore in the past two years.
There is no denying the fact that our overseas tours of government officials — which mostly yield no result — appear to be nothing but pleasure trips and a waste of taxpayers’ money. On February 17, the Planning Commission rejected a proposal of foreign trips for 30 officials for training on building food across the country under a project also of the Food Ministry. However, it was rejected terming the proposal “unnecessary” as the building of food warehouse technology is already available in the country. In the first week of February, another proposal for foreign trips for three government officials, including the inspector general of police, to visit a factory in Germany to see raw materials of bed sheets and pillow covers under a procurement plan for police officials drew huge criticism. Sarcastically, our policymakers have repeatedly sounded warnings against the squandering of public money by way of such futile provisions.
The ministry has not disclosed the tour schedule and the budget yet, although it is mandatory to publish the source of expenditure and the purpose of training for transparency. According to the report, the delegation consists of the secretary of the ministry, three additional secretaries, six deputy secretaries and one joint secretary. Experts said the eleven officials are a big number for this tour and people need to know the cost and validation of the trip. Besides, there is no need to go abroad for training on food security as Bangladesh has achieved tremendous success in the field. They also think the socioeconomic perspective of the UK and Turkey is not well matched with our country. So they don’t think it’s realistic to go there for food security training.
The practice of sending government officials abroad for training, which can be locally done, spending taxpayers money is unacceptable. The government must, therefore, be stringent about preventing the waste of public money in such a manner. Rather, it must strengthen local institutions with financial and human resources so that necessary training could be organised at home.
