ACC starts probing MPO corruption

The Anti-Corruption Commission has started investigating corruption allegations in monthly pay order for about 300 non-government teachers where secondary and higher education directorate officials are involved.
The DSHE authorities on Thursday supplied the commission with necessary papers along with personal details of at least 10 of their officials who were found involved in the corruption in a DSHE investigation in this regard. The commission sought the papers in the past week.
‘The necessary papers have been supplied as requisitioned. The ACC in the past week asked the directorate for the papers of the monthly pay order for May and details of the process and officials involved in the process,’ Ataur Rahaman, director (administration) of the directorate, told New Age on Thursday.
‘It is perhaps the biggest-ever corruption in monthly pay order in recent history. The DSHE investigation in this regard has found 10 people involved,’ he said.
Two week ago, the DSHE investigation report submitted to the DSHE director general, Fahima Khatun, found that 10 officials including a teacher at the DSHE, were involved in giving the monthly pay order to about 300 non-government teachers illegally from May.
Five of them are office assistants at the DSHE, four are engaged in the education management and information services cell and the headteacher of a non-government school in Netrakona, according to the report.
The three-member investigation team headed by DSHE director (monitoring) Md Didarul Alam, set up on June 20, recommended that all the officials involved in the scam should face legal action.
The report said that all the 10 officials in exchange for bribe had enlisted 300 teachers of 156 schools and madrassahs to give salary from the public exchequer in the form of monthly pay order although some teachers had no mandatory application for enlistment in the process.
All the teachers received monthly pay order for May in mid-June. The directorate in July cancelled all the illegally procured monthly pay orders.
It recommended that the headteachers must take steps to refund the salary the teachers had received in June.
The five DSHE officials found involved are Alamgir Hossain Mollah, Masud Rana, Nasir Uddin, Md Hannan and Matiur Rahman. Four EMIS cell officials are computer programmers Md Ziaur Rahman and Nazimud Doula and computer operators Muklasur Rahman and Romanan Rahman. The name of the headteacher from Netrakona could not be established.
Computer programmer Ziaur Rahamn told New Age that the team had not talked to him during the investigation but he read in newspapers that he had also been blamed for the corruption.
Most of the educational institutions in Bangladesh are set up on private initiatives and they later start getting government financial benefits on meeting certain conditions from the exchequer in the form of monthly pay order.
For MPO enlistment, district education officers receive applications with necessary papers from school authorities and after a preliminary scrutiny, the papers are forwarded to the directorate, according to rules.
A committee, led by the director general of the secondary and higher education directorate, is entrusted to give the final approval for the MPO enlistment.
But the investigation committee found that the 300 teachers had managed to get the MPO facility without submitting applications to the district education officers and without having the approval of the MPO committee.