Review of Palak’s spending binge: Tk7,000cr can be saved on 21 ICT projects

Infograph: TBS

With an ICT incubation centre lying underutilised in Natore town, another IT park was planned in Singra upazila of the same district. Natore, the home district of Zunaid Ahmed Palak, the ICT state minister of the toppled Awami League government, was one of the locations selected for ICT parks with Cineplex.

Six such movie theatres planned in districts including Rangpur, Gopalganj and Natore would have cost Tk90 crore.

The list of extravagant plans does not end here. Over Tk370 crore plan to make ten movies on the lives of Sheikh Hasina and her family members, and transforming 10 villages into IoT-based "digital villages" at a cost of Tk500 crore were among the development plans on the ICT Division's table when Palak was there.

Those were unnecessary projects taken at taxpayers' money, finds an interim government review committee, which sees scopes to save nearly Tk7,000 crore by slashing unnecessary components of 21 ongoing ICT projects. This would amount to 37% of the estimated project costs of Tk18,600 crore.

"We immediately halted Tk1,800 crore of absolutely unnecessary spending. Much more under review," ICT Secretary Shish Haider Chowdhury told The Business Standard.

The review committee, led by an additional secretary for planning and development of the division, has spotted many such unnecessary, cost-inflated and uncalled-for projects taken by the previous regime.

"Rationales for such spending are beyond our understanding – no business case at all. Former state minister Zunaid Ahmed Palak and his team may answer," the ICT secretary said.

A thorough audit is underway to identify irregularities and deviations in the projects under the division of the Ministry of Posts, Telecommunication, and Information Technology.

Where the big chunks remain

Without final approval yet, some primary reports of the review committee reveal that two foreign-funded projects – Establishing Digital Connectivity (EDC), and Enhancing Digital Government and Economy (EDGE) – may be slashed by around Tk5,000 crore.

Review Committee Head Mahbubur Rahman told TBS, "We primarily proposed cutting off the unnecessary, cost-inflated and discriminatory elements. Much more could have been saved if a huge sum had not been spent already."

The EDC project component for providing 1 lakh broadband connections to rural end users, including educational and government offices, at over Tk300 crore has been proposed for cancellation.

According to Mahbub, the government in four previous connectivity projects spent Tk2,500 crore to lay fibre optic cables up to union levels. The infrastructure was given to public-private partnership with two companies unfairly leaving only 10% of income for the government.

"The rest can be done much cost effectively on a commercial basis by the internet service providers," said Mahbub.

Apparently, procurement of the already purchased equipment was done at 70%-80% higher prices, he said.

Similarly, cancelling the plan for building 10 digital villages would save over Tk500 crore as it was "discriminatory".

"What was wrong with the other tens of thousands of villages?" said the review committee head.

Amid a risk of no integration with the prevailing Local Government Division platform for birth and death registration, the EDC project plan to build a new one to add citizen's marriage, divorce, adoption and death cause data has been cancelled to save some Tk300 crore.

Besides redundant or poorly yielding infrastructure building, state funded ICT training programmes drew criticism due to poor outcome and non-transparency.

"We observed some trainee complaints of not receiving allowances promised under the EDGE project. We recommended downsizing the scope of training," said Mahbubur Rahman, adding the EDGE projects' unnecessary elements including building technology labs at universities to be cut off.

"Under multiple projects several thousand crore taka has already been spent for such facilities, including that in IT parks and educational institutes without directions for proper utilisation. Why more?"

Only one Cineplex at Keraniganj Hi-Tech Park will get the go ahead due to the higher progress till date. Some Tk90 crore will be saved by cancelling the other five including those in Rangpur, Gopalganj and Natore.

Committee observations

According to the review committee, many parts of the projects were not in alignment with the project objectives.

"Some were not even ICT Division's jobs at all," reads the review.

Committee members are curious about the division's overenthusiasm in taking too many uncalled-for projects bypassing the relevant government entities.

Palak, through the A2i project, built 17-18 online platforms to be used by other government authorities without consulting them, said Mahbubur Rahman.

"Build first and later force others to use it" was his way, he told TBS, adding, "Poor coordination, hurried procurement resulted in poor outcome and chaos."

For instance, online payment platform Ekpay was launched in 2019 by the former ICT adviser Sajeeb Wazed Joy and it is yet to get a payment service operator licence from the central bank.

In Thakurgaon, lands having other government infrastructure were procured for an IT park.

Another member of the committee said no one had asked why the ICT Division under Palak was seeking thousands of crores of taka from the government to build dozens more IT parks, incubation centres, computer labs, training centres and other infrastructure while the previous ones struggled in utilisation and minimum return generation to avert subsidised operations.

Nearly three dozen of the hi-tech or IT park projects involved excessive land acquisitions, inflated land development costs, oversized infrastructure in non-urban areas, writes the committee.

To get any project approved, Palak used names of the Sheikh family members in the projects and the interim government changed the names again.

Due to a complete lack of feasibility, plans for three of the IT parks far from the nearest towns of Bandarban, Patuakhali and Thakurgaon have already been cancelled.

Four hi-tech parks at Cox's Bazar, Chattogram, Cumilla and Sylhet have been cancelled as not much was spent, according to Project Director AKAM Fazlul Hoque.

Also, stopping the vertical rise of hi-tech park buildings under construction will save funds.

The committee also found that more than Tk300 crore was wasted in gaming and app development projects as neither the platforms nor the apps were used, nor the trainees learned enough.

They recommended not continuing or repeating such spending.

"All the arms of the ICT Division opted for the same projects like training centres, digital labs as if the Bangladesh Computer Council, the Department of ICT, and the Hi-Tech Park Authority have no different work."

Projects for women empowerment lacked transparency in beneficiary selection, reads the review.

Hurry often resulted in procurement before securing the planned foreign funds, which the committee labelled as "against project discipline".

Meanwhile, some projects lost relevance, as many of the targeted beneficiaries already got the benefits by alternative means, said the interim government's ICT Policy Adviser Faiz Ahmad Taiyeb.

Cost-benefit analysis is going on to decide on how much of the ongoing projects to continue, he added. 

Bigger waste was on the card

Starting with crore, ICT projects grew to several hundred crores of taka in the past decade, but in the past four-five years, the sizes surged to several thousand crores.

There had been 25 project plans involving some Tk15,000-16,000 crore costs before the fall of Sheikh Hasina and some astonished the committee members.

For instance, more than Tk370 crore was planned for making 10 movies to glorify Hasina and her family members, which the interim government finds irrelevant and cost-inflated.

Of the 25 unapproved plans, the committee rejected eight outright and the others may be considered at half or one-third their sizes.

In a week of the committee formation in late August, Posts, Telecommunications and Information Technology Adviser Nahid Islam expressed his frustration about the fact that despite the ICT Division's Tk25,000 crore development budget during Awami League, Bangladesh lags behind countries like Myanmar, Sri Lanka, the Maldives, Bhutan, Rwanda and Ghana in different international indexes of digital readiness.

The audit may reveal the reasons, said the ICT secretary.