Stop unnecessary foreign trips

The higher-ups in the government have been stressing adoption of austerity measures to counter the potential fallout of the current critical economic condition. However, it is incumbent upon the government to set examples regarding austerity drives. 

There has been criticism from various quarters about the government not practising what it preaches. At a time when government high-ups have been repeatedly telling the public to practise austerity, we have seen luxury projects undertaken by the government. Why should the public be suffering under strict austerity measures, while government high-ups enjoy luxury? Such an atrociously expensive project funded by the taxpayers' money makes a mockery of the austerity measures. 

These luxury projects reflect the general tendency of government functionaries to waste thousands of crores of taka at a time when the country's economy and the people, in general, are suffering. While people are being told to swallow the austerity pill, we see no sign of government officials cutting back on their costs or trying to be more efficient when it comes to completing different government projects using taxpayers' money.

Evidently, the government has taken cognizance of the issue and has decided to halt all foreign trips of officials. This, we believe is a step in the right direction. 

According to a recent report published in this newspaper, the government has imposed a ban on all manner of foreign trips for officials of ministries, government agencies, as well as autonomous, state-owned, and semi-government organisations. 

However it must be stated that way back on May 12, the Finance Ministry issued circular limiting non-essential overseas trips for bureaucrats. However, the ground reality has belied expectations. Showing complete disregard for that directive, officials from different government agencies have continued to go on such trips. For instance, several officials of the Chattogram Water Supply and Sewerage Authority (CWASA), including its managing director, went abroad recently as part of a project that had over 80 per cent of its physical work already completed.

The Ministry of Women and Children Affairs took a Tk 271.83-crore project to teach children how to swim to reduce deaths from drowning. As part of the project implementation, a total of 16 officials would go abroad for learning how to swim and a staggering Tk 50 lakh was kept as the cost of the trip. If we look back, we will see that 100 officials were supposed to go abroad to learn how to dig ponds at a cost of Tk 7.50 crore. The Directorate of Primary Education sought to send 1,000 officials abroad in the name of learning how to cook hotchpotch as part of its school-feeding programme, sparking fun talks on social media. It had sought Tk 5 crore for this trip. Subsequently, the tour did not happen at all.

A culture has been created in the country where high-ranking government officials are offered foreign trips to inspect materials for various projects or for "training" purposes. In the majority of cases, the people who are chosen for these trips are senior officials who are nearing retirement or have few years left of their service, and whose "training" is seldom put at the service of said projects or the country. 

We believe there is hardly any need for going abroad to learn how to dig a pond or plant grass or cook hotchpotch. Foreign tours in the name of gaining such knowledge are simply a wastage of public money. And this is not in the interest of the state but of the officials concerned. In most of cases, foreign trips serve as pleasure trips for the officials and little else. 

 If the restrictions are enforced strictly, it will certainly save huge public money from going down the drain. And the ban on unnecessary foreign trips should always remain in force.