Asaduzzaman Chowdhury, the acting Managing Director of the state-owned telecommunication company BTCL, has been temporarily suspended due to allegations of extrajudicial cancellation of tender and acting with dishonest motive in the project taken for 5G activation. It is said that this dismissal order has been given on the allegation of irregularities in the evaluation of the tenders called under the optical fiber transmission network development project of BTCL for the implementation of 5G through BTCL.
Posts and Telecommunications Secretary Abu Hena Morshed Zaman delivered this instruction on Tuesday (November 7, 2023) by order of the President.
According to the order, he has been given this punishment for not being the approval authority as per the financial authority assigned to the financial department as the approver of the technical report, canceling the tender without jurisdiction, not following the advice given in the 213th meeting to correct the obvious deviations in the technical report and violating the government employee rules.
According to the sources, three companies responded to the tender by submitting one-stage two-envelope tenders. Following the rules of PPR 2008, the Board of Directors of BTCL constituted a seven member evaluation committee. The Preliminary and Technical Evaluation Committee considered all the three tenders eligible and gave the final evaluation report on April 6. Then in the 213th board meeting of BTCL, accused Asaduzzaman Chowdhury himself presented 2 companies as responsive. But not satisfied with the technical evaluation, he canceled all the tenders. Then he decided to call for re-tenders after 55 days on June 1 instead of 15 days as stated in PPR 2008.
Allegedly, one party is trying to cancel the tender and re-tender to get the work. And the victim is the managing director of BTCL.
According to sources, BTCL’s 5G readiness project was approved by the Executive Committee of the National Economic Council (ECNEC) in February 2022. The cost of this project has been estimated at 1 thousand 59 crores taka. Among them, a tender for a package worth Tk. 460 crore for the supply of optical fiber transmission network equipment was released on September 15. The last time to participate was November 2. After opening the tender on December 20, it can be seen that Nokia, ZTE and Huawei participated in the tender.
According to the PPR (Public Procurement Rule) rules, the Project Convenor Azam Ali submitted the Technical Evaluation Report to Manjir Ahmed, the Project Director. Later, the project manager submitted this report to Asaduzzaman, Acting Managing Director of BTCL. However, the evaluation report was not officially accepted. Although there is an obligation to declare the result of the tender within a week of receiving the report in the PPR, there are also allegations of delay in opening the financial report of the tender.
On June 13, BTCL informed the three companies in writing. On June 19, the annual development program review meeting of the Department of Telecommunication decided that the tender should be invited afresh. In the meantime, Huawei sent a letter against the managing director of BTCL on May 16 for delay in approving the report, referring to when the evaluation report came to the managing director. The managing director wrote to Huawei on August 27 as the first step of punishment for allegedly trying to influence decision-making illegally by obtaining confidential information. Huawei appealed against this penalty letter to the Review Panel. The CPTU orders that this penalty letter is null and void. Also sent letters to three companies without application adding penalty order to the competent and managing director.
Asaduzzaman Chowdhury was serving as managing director of BTCL on additional duty from 20 February 2023. According to BTCL’s website, Deputy Managing Director (Finance) Anwar Hossain has been appointed as Managing Director on additional charge.