Monday’s statement of the Planning Minister MA Mannan has drawn attention of country’s concerned circles when he said, ‘corruption is a reality in the country and there is no reason to deny that’. He said this while addressing the inaugural session of a training workshop on ‘Capacity building for generating gender responsive environmental data in focusing to SDGs’ held at the Bangabandhu International Conference Centre (BICC) in the capital. Mr Mannan is a senior cabinet member and in charge of the planning ministry. So far as we know, he is a gentle man and tries to tell the truth. We appreciate that as an important minister, he has admitted that corruption prevails in the country.
We also want to believe that it is not a political jugglery. In the previous week, Road Transport and Bridges Minister (September 20) urged the ACC to conduct graft investigation in his ministry assuring that the government will not obstruct it. He said the greedy people must be checked to make the institutions free of corruption. It is alleged that a sizeable section of government officials is directly or indirectly involved in corruption. Especially, they have become more desperate getting political patronization and legal protection. A few months ago, Foreign Minister AK Abdul Momen told the media that most of those who have bought houses and other assets in different foreign countries including Canada are government officials, where the number of politicians is a few.
After his disclosure, many days have gone but we’re yet to get the list of money launderers. There is a strong law — to save the corrupt officials – by which no law enforcement agencies not even the Anti-Corruption Commission can bring any graft charge or arrest them without prior government approval.
The government and its ministers are well protected against corruption. Otherwise most of them would be busy fighting their own corruption.
