The office of the Electrical Advisor and Chief Electrical Inspector under the government’s Power Division has not published its annual report for 42 years.
Moreover, the office has not audited its expenditure for five years since 2009.
For any government office, publishing annual reports and auditing incomes and expenditures are mandatory according to existing rules.
The office ensures proper control over life and property in generation, transmission and distribution of electricity.
Its main responsibility is inspecting the installation, substations and lines and granting licenses for high tension and medium tension electricity connections.
The high and medium tension connections are generally installed for commercial purposes, especially at industrial establishments.
The office of the electrical advisor, through the Electrical License Board under it, also issues licences to electrical contractors, engineers and electricians.
The Dhaka Tribune has also found that apart from not publishing annual reports for over four decades, the website of the electrical advisor’s office is badly outdated.
As is normal with the websites of government offices, this website does not have any citizen charter either.
This means that the two major sources of information about the activities of the office are virtually unavailable.
A Power Division official said the advisor and the ministry were both responsible for the situation.
“The fact that the office of the Electrical Advisor has not published annual report makes it clear that there are problems in the organisation,” he said.
He also said although the government is keen on entering the “digital age,” the outdated website was a result of nothing but callousness on the part of the government officials.
“Everybody has the right to see the citizen charter of the office of the Electrical Advisor,” he said.
According to the 2011 Annual Report of the Power Division, from January 2009 till December 2011, the office of the advisor deposited a total of Tk5.54 crore to the government exchequer.
However, none of the later annual reports of the Power Division say anything about how much money the office deposited with the government exchequer.
A chartered accountant, on condition of anonymity, said: “It would be really difficult for the office of the electrical advisor to get an internal government audit because there has been no external audit over the years. Even getting an external auditor will be difficult. No external auditor will be ready to take the responsibilities if there was any irregularity.”
Electrical Advisor and Chief Electrical Inspector Md Abul Kashem told the Dhaka Tribune yesterday: “We have already invited an expression of interest from reputed audit firms for auditing our last five years’ accounts.”
Admitting that the website was outdated, he said he could not say anything in detail why no annual report had been published for 42 years because he took over just a few months ago.
