Information showed powerful people grabbed most funds allocated for corona treatment and the rich, particularly leaders of the local bodies laundered almost the entire funds that the government provided for the poor.
At Lakhani Union in Habiganj district, 300 recipients of cash assistance were recorded just against four mobile numbers to suggest Union Parishad chairmen and some of their cohorts had grabbed the fund. Real recipients were not even informed and this may be the case at many other places in the country. In fact banks and public money are now an easy grab of the rich while the poor are becoming poorer having little access to banks. Meanwhile, private banks are now family banks and the nation’s bank deposits are going to a few hands. Over the past 12 years bank money was indiscriminately laundered. Some suggestions said six trillion Taka were siphoned off in the past several years. The government saved most state owned banks with budgetary support from drowning. It needs no mention that people in the corridors of power had their hands behind all such laundering and the latest incident showed powerful people can now walk into any bank and get away with crores of Taka in cash.
We wonder why we have such a big budget that needs bank borrowing for deficit financing. Actually, luxurious life-hungry bureaucracy and power hungry people laundered most budgetary money while the government increased tax to collect more budgetary funds. In our view the government can provide the same amount of public service by just halving the budget, taxes and rampant corruption. The government is mindlessly punishing people by raising taxes on business and industries, gas, water and other daily essentials like onion, edible oil and salt. People in power have plenty of money so they don’t care but common people are living in total suffocation.
Let others suffer but corruption and bank robbery must go on.
