Take legal action against the contractor

It is unacceptable that a contractor of the Local Government Engineering Department (LGED) has disrupted the flow of the Ratnai river in Lalmonirhat's Aditmari upazila worse following its excavation. The contractor, Mohammad Yunus and Brothers (Pvt) Ltd of Chattogram, claims to have completed the excavation work in December last year, but the LGED says about 25 percent of the work has remained incomplete. The contractor, however, still collected the full payment—Tk 1.81 crore—for the work.

According to local farmers, the project was mired in corruption and in the name of excavation, the contractor even had the audacity to dredge and collect sand and sell it. The Aditmari Upazila Nirbahi Officer alleged that the contractor only dug holes in the riverbed in the name of excavation, which has made things worse by obstructing the flow of the river. This is naturally going to cause farmers and locals all sorts of problems. And agricultural production in the area may suffer as a result.

The Lalmonirhat LGED Executive Engineer claims to have written to the errant company seven times to complete the work, but the contractor never replied. What this demonstrates is a type of over-confidence on part of the contractor that it can simply get away with robbing the public's money—and without any consequences for not completing its contractual obligation. What we would like to ask is, why was this company given the contract in the first place? Is it because of lobbying and influence? That would explain why the company feels so sure that it won't have to face any repercussion for what it did to the three-kilometre stretch of the Ratnai river.

Officials have said that they will blacklist the contractor if they do not reply to their request to complete the work by this month's end; however, we believe that officials should have taken such a step by now. Moreover, the authorities should take legal action against the contracting company, as it is the public's money that it has taken without delivering on what it was legally obligated to. Unless such actions are taken, more and more contracting companies will feel emboldened to pursue a similar path. And the public's money will continue to get flushed down the drain on such wasteful projects.