DIRECTORATE of Food (DoF) recently paid Tk 90 crore to a company for importing about 1 lakh tonnes of inedible wheat from France defying all objections. Negating intelligence reports and the Ministry concerned, and breaching rules and regulations, the Directorate paid the amount of Tk 100 crore to the company that irked Parliamentary Standing Committee on Ministry of Food. The Committee recommended exemplary punishment for the officials to the government but in this instance too, the corrupt officials hopefully would get respite again. The last year scams over importing inedible wheat from Brazil, France, and Romania which brought about a nationwide outcry and embarrassed the government is yet to go through a massive investigation, and the lack of punishment gave them the scope to launder public money again.
The Parliamentary Committee at a meeting blamed the Directorate for large-scale corruption, directed the Food Ministry to realize the money, asked the government to blacklist the importer Impex Consultant Limited and give exemplary punishment to dishonest officials. The outstanding amount was released without testing the standard of the imported wheat properly. The Food Minister blamed the Directorate solely for the laundering citing his ignorance about the incident, but the Directorate is a part of the Ministry. The Minister could not avoid his responsibility. The Ministry and the government should have been more vigilant after the last year’s wheat scams but we find that the offenders have become more audacious in gobbling up public money, thus betraying the public trust.
As per news report, the issue of rotten wheat came again to the forefront as the National Security Intelligence submitted a report to the government high-ups. We see, impunity encourages crime — as best exemplified in the incident after the last year scams of wheat importation from Brazil, France, and Romania. By importing substandard and inedible wheat from different countries involving huge amounts of public money, many Ministry officials have perhaps swollen their pockets.
The apex court order, citizens’ fury, opponent political parties’ criticism…..nothing compelled the government to take disciplinary action against the officials involved in last year’s scam and definitely the latest incident will only lead to the destruction of public health and the laundering of public money.
It is a shame for us, if not for the persons involved in stealing public money. In every sector corruption is easy.
