State-owned telecom company BTCL is becoming a house of corruption, since crores of taka are being drained out of the company ever year, claimed Transparency International Bangladesh (TIB), yesterday.
The watchdog said government-backed musclemen and politically influential persons, in collusion with BTCL officials, were involved in corruption worth around Tk2,000 crore, every year.
“Corruption and irregularities of the BTCL is happening openly,” said Iftekharuzzaman, executive director of the TIB, while releasing a report titled “BTCL: Challenges of Good Governance and Way Forward” at a press conference in the capital’s Brac Centre Inn.
He said proper plans and regulations were absent when the government restructured the Bangladesh Telegraph and Telephone Board (BTTB) into the Bangladesh Telecommunications Company Limited (BTCL) as a company.
“Although it was believed that after forming a company, the BTCL will be efficient and profitable, but the reality says something different,” Iftekharuzzaman said.
Recommendations placed by the TIB included reducing the Telecom Ministry’s interference in the BTCL, facilitating the employees, and the formation of proper rules and regulations.
“We also recommend that the government should merge the stare-run telecom companies Teletalk, Bangladesh Submarine Cable Company [BSCCL] and BTCL for better governance,” Iftekharuzzaman added.
According to the findings of the TIB, the company lost Tk1,500 crore because of call record tampering, as it showed only 5.79 billion call minutes instead of the original 8.5 billion minutes.
The TIB also said the BTCL failed to produce the machine-generated call records for international calls in 2011-12, because of corruption among thw officials of the BTCL and Telecom Ministry.
While presenting the findings, TIB researcher Dipu Roy said the BTCL officials were tampering call records, facilitating the private companies with logistics beyond authorisation, engaging in illegal VoIP business and renting BTCL-owned land to other people.
“Currently, the private and foreign carriers have sent outstanding bills to the BTCL worth Tk965 crore, of which the company will never be able to pay back even Tk500 crore since the officials are facilitating the private firms,” she added.
They added that the post and telecom minister and other senior ministry officials were using cars taken from the BTCL and there was a huge misappropriation of funds regarding this.
Only 60% of the total expenditure on maintenances and operation was spent on real claims, according to the TIB.
Dipu said the pool car drivers were also renting the vehicles to private car renting companies.
“The drivers are getting Tk15,000 every alternative month for repairs,” she said.
In the report, Dipu alleged that the BTCL officials were involved in illegal VoIP business by dodging the telecom regulator’s monitoring system.
Dipu also said the government should take initiatives to make the BTCL a public limited company in six months time.
M Hafizuddin Khan, TIB member and adviser to the immediate past interim government, said corruption had increased after the formation of BTCL as a company.
“I was a telecom secretary 16 years back and at that time, the BTTB was more profitable than the BTCL is now. There was corruption also back then, but now it has increased,” he said.
