PC finds substandard work, irregularities

Country’s central planning body has found shoddy work and irregularities in Dhaka's Keraniganj jail construction as the project came in for a fresh revision with both cost and time overruns, officials said.

The Planning Commission (PC) raised its reservations pending endorsement of the revised project and its team visited the project site to evaluate the logic behind the proposed changes.

The Department of Prisons recently sought revision of its long-struggling jail-construction project hiking the cost by 52 per cent to Tk 4.82 billion despite some irregularities in execution period.

Besides, it sought project-implementation deadline lengthened up to June 2019 although the department started constructing the jail way back in 2005.

The PC fact-finding team, while visiting the site, found substandard works and some irregularities in the project-implementation period, project-insiders told the FE.

It found that the authorities had constructed faulty Visitors' Meeting Room-1 for the prisoners and their relatives, which does not work properly.

"The room is so small and defective that the prisoners and their relatives cannot hear each other across the partition between them at the newly constructed Keraniganj jail," says a PC report on the findings.

According to the Department, only 64 persons can meet their imprisoned relatives at the central jail, relocated from Dhaka-city heart.

One insider said the Department of Prisons in its reply said since the Room-1 was found faulty, they sought revision of the project proposal for building Visitors' Meeting Room-2 to accommodate 124 imprisoned persons at the jail in a good meeting environment.

He said the Commission team had also observed some unusually higher costs in some components of the revised DPP.

The team found out that the Department of Prisons incorporated nine fresh components in violation of some directions of the Executive Committee of the National Economic Council (ECNEC) and increased costs for 11 components in its revised Development Project Proposal (RDPP) placed for approval.

Earlier, the PC had raised its reservations at the Project Evaluation Committee meeting on the revised Tk 4.82 billion RDPP and decided to evaluate the progress, status of execution and adjustment of the proposed higher cost.

The government in 2005 approved the Dhaka Central Jail Construction Project at Keraniganj site involving Tk 3.17 billion to complete the entire works in five years to June 2010.

But the Department of Prisons had failed to complete the construction and sought revision and time extension on four occasions.

Thereafter, the government for the first time revised the project proposal enhancing the cost to Tk 3.37 billion and extending the execution deadline up to June 2013.

The time had been extended further up to June 2014 for completing the works following the failure.

When the Department failed to complete the project even after extension of time twice, the government again revised the project by hiking the cost to Tk 4.06 billion and extending the execution timeline up to June 2017.

There again, it failed to catch up with the extended time. The government was forced to extend the execution timeline up to June 2018.

Now, the jail department sought project cost hiked to Tk 4.82 billion and execution deadline up to June 2019 by adding nine fresh components and raising cost of 11 components.

The PC found that the Department of Prisons had added a fresh component --foreign training-- costing Tk2.0 million, enhanced the cost of parade-ground-expansion work from Tk 2.63 million to Tk 50 million, DIG office- expansion-work cost from Tk1.66 million to Tk10 million, electrification outside the jail cost to Tk 188.66 million in the RDPP from Tk 60.68 million.

The PC noticed although scope of works in some components has been reduced, their cost has been enhanced in the RDPP.

Although the Department as per the RDPP wants to construct one main gate instead of the existing two under the original DPP, the cost has been enhanced here, said the Commission report.

A senior PC official, requesting anonymity, said: "Violating the Prime Minister-led ECNEC's direction, incorporation of some components into the DPP and raising the cost unusually are tantamount to gross irregularities."

The DIG (prisons) and the project director of the Department of Prisons were not available for comment.

[email protected]