Students raided the ICT tower located at Agargaon in Dhaka on Tuesday with a list of corrupt officials of the IT sector. Under the leadership of Musaddiq Ali Ibn Mohammad, one of the co-coordinators of the anti-discrimination student movement, students of engineering departments of various universities including BUET, Dhaka University and various categories of ICT professionals participated in it.
The delegation went to meet the Executive Director Ranjit Kumar with the corruption list of Bangladesh Computer Council at the beginning. Instead of going to his office on the second floor of ICT Tower, the delegation went to the office of Senior Secretary Shamsul Arefin on the 4th floor and asked the BCC Executive Director why the latest recruitment test was conducted through BCC instead of through BUET as per the traditional rules. Besides, he was questioned about the corruption of EDGE project, National Data Center and BCC and its subordinate projects.
Defending himself, Ranjit Kumar said, “I am not the signing authority of big projects, these matters were looked after by the secretary and the former state minister.” However, the delegation gave him an ultimatum to resign by tomorrow as he was not satisfied with the answer.
Allegedly, EDGE Project Change Management Specialist and Deputy Secretary to Government Md Tofail Hossain, Analyst (Network Security) and Project Director Biswajit Tarafdar, Manager (Internship) Md Mahbub Karim, Regional Director Madhusudan Chandra and others left the office after hearing about the students’ campaign.
BUET student Talha Ibn Alauddin, one of the co-coordinators of ICT Entrepreneurs Council of the Anti-Discrimination Movement said, “Mr. Ranjit Kumar has committed unlimited corruption in the PPP contract for network maintenance in 2600 unions in the third phase of the Info Gov project. In the feasibility study by BUET, the revenue share was proposed at 40% for BCC and 60% for private companies, but instead of that, he fixed the revenue share at 10% for BCC and 90% for private companies. Through this 20-year contract, Palak, Ranjit and their allies were financially benefitted at a large scale, but the government has suffered a financial loss of thousands of crores of taka every month”.
In this regard, Ranjit Kumar told DigiBangla, I am a government employee. I can confirm that I am not personally involved in any corruption. I have done all the work according to the government rules. They talked about the exam procedure. I said that one of my relatives got a job in that exam. But not only my nephew but 24 other people got job in that exam. And it was my duty to uphold what happened at the policy level. I didn’t do it alone. I am Hope in Edge Project. The whole thing is looked at by the World Bank. TOR testing is done by them. I can sanction up to 10 crore taka.
When asked about the resignation, he said, I have asked them to suggest in writing. They didn’t give it. So, I apologized to them. It is fine if the government transfers me. But, it is not right to pressurize me. I am a servant of the government.
It is reported that later the delegation met a2i Project Director (Additional Secretary) Mamunur Rashid Bhuiyan. At that time, they handed over the names and specific complaints of about 15 officials, including Majedul Islam, Farhad Zahid Sheikh, Manik Mahmud, program manager of a2i, who committed corruption in the name of Digital Bangladesh and Smart Bangladesh, to a2i PD. At this time, they gave an ultimatum to suspend the mentioned officers within the next 24 hours to investigate their corruption and to immediately reinstate those who have been sacked with various tags for not supporting corruption in the past years. After giving this ultimatum, their activities were suspended by the government in the afternoon.
