A section of Election Commission officials are allegedly earning a huge sum of money by organising different kinds of training programmes in the name of EC projects with the same trainers and same participants.
The EC officials allegedly earned around Tk200 crore by offering the same training to the same field-level officials twice during the 10th parliamentary polls and five phases upazila parishads polls.
Field levels officials include presiding officers, assistant presiding officers and polling officers, a source in the EC said.
The officials who are capable of imparting training were mostly dropped from the team of trainers.
A section of officials of the Election Training Institute (ETI) and EC have already become millionaires by organising such unnecessary trainings in the name of different projects, he said.
A number of EC officials in return for anonymity said the corrupt officials had formed a syndicate and the members of that syndicate only get the opportunity to provide trainings.
The field-level officials who received training for the last project on voter list updating are also being given training this time and it started yesterday.
The commission put aside Tk2 crore for the training on the upcoming voter list updating programme which is scheduled to kick off on May 15. A senior assistant secretary of the EC said there was no need to provide training this time.
Director General of the ETI Khandaker Mizanur Rahman said the commission is giving different kinds of trainings to the EC officials as is required.
Explaining the reasons behind frequent training programmes he said the EC cannot hold upazila polls with the training imparted for the parliamentary polls as the procedures are different.
On the training of EC officials on voter list updating he said the ETI organises the training programme as per the decision of the commission. “The election management wing of the EC selects the trainers of the training programme.”
