Recently the Daily Sun carried series of reports on Dhaka North City Corporation and brought to public notice appalling stories about its questionable activities. The reports brought serious allegations of corruption and financial misconduct against the DNCC administration. The charges based on documents obtained right from the city corporation are not speculative; those rather seem to be genuine. A long list of corrupt practices of DNCC can be made; but there is no such necessity because, thanks to wide media coverage, people are already aware of its irregularities ranging from the BTI scam, buying CCTV cameras at much higher prices, issuing show cause notice to its Superintending Engineer for not signing an illegal procurement bill and leasing out of the Mohakhali and Gabtoli bus terminals violating rules and regulations - to name just a few.
Now, readers have before them another story about DNCC's misuse of public money. DNCC has a petty cash, known as Imprest Fund to pay for small and routine expenses. But the city corporation spent the fund largely for their binge on costly food and others. According to the lead story of this daily yesterday, the city administration purchased biscuits at the rate of Tk3,600 per kilogram like the infamous pillow episode. It spent more than Tk93,000 for the farewell ceremony of a fortunate personal secretary to the Mayor. Allegations are also there that they entertained guests with such costly food items as Kacchi Biryani, Diet Cane cola, chicken sandwiches, dates, cashew nut, boneless chicken strips and fruit cakes, against tea and biscuits in other countries.
From the above episodes of irregularities, people find it reasonable to believe that corrupt practices have been going on in the city corporation unabatedly despite the government's much avowed policy of 'zero tolerance against corruption'. But what is even more alarming is the noticeable inaction of the Anti-Corruption Commission. The former head constable Benazir Ahmed has allegedly amassed fabulous amount of wealth --- surely not overnight. Naturally, what this man did during the entire period of his service life was not supposed to remain unknown to the government agencies, particularly the anti-corruption watchdog. But the ACC obviously kept its ears and eyes closed until certain individual served notice to it demanding probe into Benazir's alleged corruption and threatened to submit writ petition with the apex court. We cannot hope for a corruption-free administration with such an incompetent anti-corruption agency in place.