In spite of a presidential order obligating public officials to submit their wealth statements every five years, none of them met last December’s submission deadline.
The public administration ministry is yet to take any steps to ask civil servants to submit their wealth statements.
According to ministry officials, the ministry has taken no initiative to receive wealth statements from public officials and there have been no directives from senior ministry officials in this regard.
The last time wealth statements were taken from public servants was during the military-backed caretaker government’s regime after an order by the president made their submissions obligatory.
A total of 1.2 million civil servants had submitted their wealth statements at that time. But the deadline for the next submission has already expired on December 31, 2012 according to the president’s order, public administration ministry officials informed.
Public Administration Senior Secretary Abdus Sobhan Sikdar told the Dhaka Tribune: “It’s true that the date of submission has already expired. But the ministry has decided not to take any wealth statements from public servants as all of them are getting individual tax information numbers.”
“They have to submit their income tax statements every year to the tax administration. So the government can get the wealth information of all officials from there. Steps can be taken against irregularities from the tax statements that they are submitting,” he said.
He also added that the public administration ministry would have to handle a huge number of files if it took wealth statements from all civil servants.
“It’s quite impossible for the ministry to handle that amount of files every five years. So the ministry has decided not to take the statements again,” Sikdar said.
Transparency International, Bangladesh (TIB) Executive Director Iftekharuzzaman told the Dhaka Tribune that the public administration ministry’s decision was unacceptable as the presidential order aimed to takie wealth statements to compare the officials’ expenditures with their incomes.
“The target of the government’s rule will not be achieved if wealth statements are not taken. So the public administration ministry should call for the statements,” he said.
Officials concerned said while the presidential order is in effect, civil servants must submit their wealth statements, and not doing so would be illegal.
As per section 13(2) of public servants appeal and disciplinary rules, all public servants have to submit their wealth statements to their respective ministries or divisions to ensure transparency and accountability.
Despite this provision, public servants did not submit wealth statements after 1990. The practice was renewed during the last caretaker government through a presidential order. Most of the public officials submitted their wealth statements by December 31, 2008.
According to ministry officials, after the elected government came to power, the process was ignored as it was perceived as an initiative of the military-backed caretaker government. The ministry also discontinued asking for the statements of those officials who did not submit their statements by the December 2008 deadline.
According to officials concerned, it is a clear offense not to submit or take the wealth statement of public servants. Experts said there was no relation between income tax statements and wealth statements as per the service rules.
