A few officials of Biman Bangladesh Airlines’ ground handling department siphoned off around Tk60 crore every month from the department’s earnings, according to an official investigation.
Then General Manager of the department Aminul Islam along with some other officials stole the money last year.
The investigation was conducted by a one-member committee led by George-Re-Livers, a Canadian national. The national flag carrier’s customer Services department appointed George-Re-Livers for the purpose.
Aminul Islam refuted all the allegations brought against him. “The charges are completely false and baseless. There was no chance to do such irregularities,” he told the Dhaka Tribune.
Later, Biman formed another committee to re-evaluate the facts unearthed by the George-Re-Livers committee. The re-evaluation committee is yet to submit its report.
The national flag-carrier provides all kinds of ground supports at the Hazrat Shahjalal International Airport, mainly including Ground Power Unit (GPU), AC van services, providing water carts for water supply, punch-card for toilets, push-card for pushing aircraft and start-card for restarting the switched off engine of the aircraft.
The report said the ground service charges TK14,700 for supplying GPU per hour to any aircraft. Every passenger aircraft needs 5/6 hours of GPU supply and each cargo aircraft requires 3/5 hours of GPU supply.
The report presented monthly figures of earnings as deposited by different services against the actual amounts.
According to the report, Biman earns TK15 crore a month providing these services. But the last year official record of the airlines showed that the department earned TK10 crore a month. That means Tk5 crore was siphoned off from the earnings.
From providing AC services, the Biman was supposed to earn TK25 crore, but the monthly revenue from the service was presented at TK13 crore, the investigation found.
The cargo loader deck showed a deposit of TK2 crore to the airlines’ exchequer, though the figure should have been Tk5 crore. The water van service income was showed TK3 crore, but this should be TK7 crore, the report said.
While the earning of the he mobile crane service should be TK20 crore, the figure was booked Tk20 crore. From the trolley service, an amount of TK3 crore was deposited to the exchequer, the actual earning should be TK7.5 crore. The internal cleaning service charges totalled TK3 crore, though it was to be TK7 crore.
After submitting the report, George-Re-Livers was forced to quit the Biman job as there were pressures from the “corrupt people” of the department, said official sources.
Requesting anonymity, a high official of Biman said those involved with the corruption of ground handling were “very influential.” They always maintained a syndicate so that they could easily proceed on with their attempts of stealing money shrugging off the top management.
