First coal, now rocks disappear

The Maddhapara Granite Mining Company Ltd. (MGMCL) is the second state-owned company to suffer from missing resources in so many weeks. MGMCL has been suffering from years of poor record-keeping and little or no oversight when it comes to how much stone was being produced in its quarries, and now we are being told that stone worth Tk 55.24 crore has gone "missing". How does one lose 360,000 tonnes of stone? This is yet another classic case of poor management where regular inventory taking is unheard of and which has allowed for siphoning off of precious hard rock. Obviously, things have not come to this state in a day.

The commercial operation of the mine had been under a Korean company since 2006 and this was later given to a Belarus-based company in 2013 for a six-year period. During the Korean company's stint, a discrepancy had been found where 106,000 tonnes of stone was unaccounted for. We would like to know why that incident didn't act as an eye-opener for the authorities that something fishy was going on. The five-member probe committee submitted its findings on July 2 and MGMCL's board has claimed that the shortage has been caused by system loss, absence of weighing scales at crushing and sorting plant, washing away by rainwater and other reasons. Why is there such apathy in putting in place checks-and-balances and good management practices in state-owned enterprises when it comes to producing resources such as rock, or coal for that matter? All the explanations given thus far shy away from any talk of theft, and if indeed it is "system loss", precisely when may we see a change in these practices is anybody's guess.