THE government’s politically most prestigious “One House, One Farm” project is in shambles as the project officials have reportedly embezzled the major part of the budgetary allocations using over-invoicing and other corrupt practices. The project at a cost of Tk 31.63 billion is almost clinically dead as the people involved in running the project have already spent more money with hardly any visible progress in the ground. The objective of the project was to turn each of the poor household of the country’s 40,527 villages into a centre of farm based economic activities to eradicate poverty by creating employment and income for the people. A report carried by a vernacular daily on Sunday explicitly exposed the fiasco of the project implementation showing that the high profile project has ended in a high-bred corruption case. The irregularities are detected but no legal action yet taken. The silence of the government at the policy making level has just encouraged the project officials and ruling party men to siphon off public money, resulting in public anger against the government.
Report said that the amount of the misappropriated money from the project could not be estimated but tangible evidence showed the project director and his cohorts committed messy misappropriation of the funds. Their corruptions were also identified in government’s audit reports. For example, in project expenditure, the management showed the cost of a pen at Tk 50 while it costs only Tk 5 in shops. Similarly, the cost of a bag has been shown at Tk 950 as against real cost of Tk 250. False vouchers were also used in showing payment for food bills, training and transport costs and resource persons’ payments. The trainee enrolment also showed people who were not present.
There are hefty evidence of breach of public procurement regulation operated through a syndicate of reliable retailers, wholesalers and suppliers to embezzle the public money. The project director and his nearest officials have pocketed money from every sector of the project.
The government started the project from July 2009 on Prime Minister’s blessed project and it was scheduled to be completed by June 2016. Rural poverty eradication was high on its agenda. But at implementation level, many solvent people and party leaders and workers have benefitted from the project fund while it was launched to help the extreme poor. Even at times the Prime Minister was loud on the project success, but the fact is that she was miserably misled by the people around her while they embezzled the fund using every opportunity in their hand. It is advisable that the government should stop the project immediately and a thorough investigation be made to punish the swindlers.
