Cost-effective use of bamboo!

It is not at all surprising that within a gap of nearly one year, the use of bamboo strips instead of mild steel (MS) rods in the construction of the three-storey academic building of the Bandarban Government Women's College was again detected by the local media men on July 19 last. The next day reports along with relevant pictures were published prominently in a section of the newspapers. It was also evident from the pictures that the rods that were used along with bamboo strips in the construction work were also scrapped ones.
Last year, the use of bamboo strips in the construction of a two-storey biological research centre at Damurhuda upazila in Chuadanga was detected. The contractor involved in the construction of the research centre was a ruling party man residing in the city's Manipuri para where the Directorate of Agricultural Extension (DAE) is located. The detection of the use of bamboo rods instead of MS rods had created media uproar. Consequently, the contractor was arrested by the members of the Rapid Action Battalion. Nobody knows what had happened to him --whether he was given any punishment or managed to escape it.
Had he been given exemplary punishment, the contractor responsible for constructing the academic building of Bandarban women's college, possibly, would have thought twice before committing an identical crime.
The detection of the foul play in public sector development works in Chuadanga and Bandarban was rather accidental. Irregularities of different types are very common in the execution of public sector development projects because of lax monitoring and inspection.
It is expected that the relevant local agencies would oversee the execution of development projects, big and small, and inform their higher authorities of irregularities, if there is any. But that is rarely done.
The cases of irregularities are usually ignored for two reasons. The most important one relates to pecuniary gains. The contractors have to share a part of the project funds with the officials of local government agencies and powerful political elements. The beneficiaries would naturally ignore contractors' faults. The second most important factor is the involvement of ruling party people in the execution of development projects.  In most cases this section of contractors indulges in more irregularities than the genuine contractors. However, the former hardly faces any opposition.
For instance, the use of bamboo strips in the construction of the academic building, obviously, has not escaped the notice of the college authorities there. But they, possibly, have ignored this serious act of irregularity for fear of reprisal by the so-called politically influential contractors.
The government enacted the Public Procurement Act in 2006 with the objective of plugging holes in the procurement of goods and services by the public sector agencies. More than 10 years after the enforcement of the law it is hard to say that the objective has been fulfilled. Pilferage and wastage of government funds meant for procurement is still widespread in most development projects.
There is another way of misappropriating funds of large development projects where making compromise with the quality of work is rather difficult. In such cases, contractors, local and foreign and officials of executing agencies in collusion with each other deliberately make delays in project execution. The delay leads to extension and project duration and hike in project costs under different pretexts. A part of the increased cost, it is alleged, is shared by all the parties involved with the execution of projects.
Hardly there is any large project that has not got an extension of its execution period and hike in fund allocation. There are instances where projects got extension for more than once with project cost going up by three to four times.
Weaknesses in the implementation of public sector development projects are many. But the same appear to be more acute in the case of supervision and monitoring. The relevant public sector agencies have never been serious about carrying out that important task. Such negligence does often take a heavy toll on the economy.
A case in point is the recent happening in haor areas. The country lost nearly one-fifth of its boro crop this year and thousands of people were subjected to immense sufferings because of the neglect on the part of some engineers of the Water Development Board (WDB). They failed to repair the haor embankment in time which had led to the inundation of a large cultivated area. The government had fired the engineers. But that did not help recoup the crop loss or lessen the sufferings of thousands of haor people.
Time and again, experts from both home and abroad have advised the government to strengthen project monitoring activities. But there has not been any tangible progress in that area. The Implementation, Monitoring and Evaluation Division (IMED) is still in a pitiable condition due to lack of necessary manpower and logistics. The capacity of the IMED needs to be enhanced along with efforts to create special cell in all the ministries to monitor the execution of their respective development projects.  
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