In this time of unprecedented global economic crisis of the new millennia, it is no crime to look for avenues of extra income. While the rich and superrich have plenty of opportunities open before them or even can wrest advantage out of nowhere, the low-income people have hardly any such option.
This is the global picture but in Bangladesh, some lower or even lowest level employees such as bearers (peons), clerks, meter readers usually of government offices and autonomous bodies have been defying this rule with impunity. They live in what they perhaps consider an El Dorado because of the opportunity they enjoy for earning basketful of money. This is why some of them make screaming headlines from time to time for the fortunes they make for them, their spouses and relatives.
When a meter reader of the Power Development Board builds several multi-storied buildings in his and his wife's or other relatives' names, only do people become aware of the man's uncanny capacity for amassing wealth. When a bearer comes to the office in a Pajero that was supposed to be in service of the managing director of an autonomous body, the former's sway of power can as well leave one perplexed.
Bearers of the Directorate General of Health Services (DGHS), PDB and other offices have made news. But one department and that too dealing with the country's education has taken the art of extracting money from service seekers to an extraordinarily high point. With its full name Madhyamik O Uchasikha Adhidaptar but called Mausi in brief, it has no employee terminated or punished for bribery. In his incisive post editorial titled " Shikha O Durniti" published in the Sangbad on Saturday last, Masum Billah, a former teacher of Rajuk Uttara Model College, have presented a detailed picture of Mausi where corruption, to go by the facts and figures mentioned, is rife which consequently has vitiated education in the country. The allegations are serious and quite known. Even the Durniti Daman Commission (Anti-corruption Commission) failed to make Mausi bring back on track. The ACC directed Mausi to investigate as many as 184 complaints and submit reports to it. After 40 letters enquiring the progress of probes (for how long is not mentioned), there was no response from Mausi and the ACC asked the director-general of the department to appear before it. The ACC has carried its own probe and submitted reports, the victims have given written complaints and even cases filed but nothing positive came out of all these.
In such a situation the entrenched corruption gets further consolidated and this is what happened. Masum Billah has cited an interesting example of accumulation of wealth by clerks and bearers of the department. The third class employees at Mausi draw salaries in the range of Tk 30,000-35,000. But many of them have their personal cars to come to office and return home. What they do is that the cars are left some way off the office before they walk to attend their duty. Don't they deserve appreciation for having this last vestige of deference! At least they are not like the bearer who years ago, using his clout as the leader of the workers' union took away the Pajero jeep meant for the corporation chief, for personal use.
What is particularly revealing is that out of 105 third class employees, at least 18 are crorepati. Not only do they have more than one residential flat in Dhaka City, they have land property and buildings elsewhere as well. All this they could do by holding venerable teachers usually the headmasters and principals hostage to wilful discrepancies left in various educational institutions-related papers. Harassed and arm-twisted, the teachers had to make compromise in order to get their job done. That is the way of coughing off bribe money by these elements from teachers seeking service.
Now it would be a mistake to think that the third class employees can do this without collusion or active cooperation from the official hierarchy in the department. After all, it is the higher authorities who have to approve the papers and sign those. Looks like the lighthouse of education has become a bastion of corruption. Is there no way of demolishing this bastion?
