Haor embankment
15 BWDB officials among 61 sued for graft
Engineer, contractor held
Officials of the Anti Corruption Commission (ACC) yesterday arrested an executive engineer and a contractor of the Bangladesh Water Development Board (BWDB) in Sunamganj for their alleged involvement in corruption in the construction of haor embankments.
The arrestees are BWDB executive engineer Afsar Uddin and a local contractor named Bacchu Mia.
The ACC officials found irregularities and negligence in the construction of embankments that collapsed, resulting in flash floods in haor regions in the last week of April.
According to ACC information officer Pranab Kumar Bhattacharya, the ACC assistant director has accused 61 persons in a case filed with Sunamganj Sadar police station yesterday. Afsar and Bacchu were shown as the first and second accused in the case. They were arrested immediately after the case was filed. The ministry is already conducting an inquiry into the alleged corruption. But the probe committees activities have been stopped until the receding of floodwater in accordance with the ministrys instruction, Mahfuzur Rahman, director general of the BWDB, told The Independent yesterday.
The ministry has asked the BWDB to evaluate the construction work after the monsoon ends, as all the embankments are now under water in haors, he said in reply to a query.
Its not possible to assess the construction works at this moment. All the haors are flooded now, Rahman added.
He said that the ACC is doing its job in its own way. He also said he heard the news of the BWDB engineers arrest.
Earlier, on May 2, the ministry suspended three BWDB officials chief engineer (Sylhet) Abdul Hye, superintendent engineer Nurul Islam and executive engineer Afsar Uddin.
On April 21, 2016, the ACC had sent a letter to the water resources ministry for an investigation report on the allegation of corruption in the haor embankments within 10 working days. However, the ministry sent its reply to the ACC after 10 months.
After the flash floods washed away crops on thousands of hectares in the haors due to damage to the embankments, local farmers alleged that the BWDB did not repair them on time.
The ACC started investigation to find out whether there were any irregularities in the building and monitoring of embankments in the haor areas.
Boro crops on 219,840 hectares of land were fully damaged and 18,205 houses were fully or partially destroyed by the floods caused by excessive rains and onrush of water from the hills in the six haor districts.
