Exploitation of professionals

What most of us, including the government agencies, are not aware is how in the name of consulting business a few very clever individuals with the help of international agencies are cheating the professionals of this country! A consulting company providing professional manpower to execute donor- funded projects, often pays these professionals very low wages and keep most of their salaries and wages in the name of "Overhead" expenditures. Perhaps it will be easier to understand the point if I give an example. Say a Consulting Company provides a "Design Engineer" to a project for a duration of five years and charge Tk 1,50,000.00 per month. The Consulting Company is going to give the Design Engineer a maximum of Tk 50,000 per month, no other additional benefits like, bonus, leave with pay etc. The clever owner of the Consulting Company in the name of "Overhead", "Social Charge", "Consulting Fee" etc. keeps the rest of the money. In reality, the owner of the company has nothing to do once the engineer is assigned to the project. The Team Leader of the Project is responsible for all administrative and technical operation of the project. The owner of the company as a middleman, month after month and year after year, will be collecting twice the salary of the engineer, doing nothing. Well, I may be slightly wrong here by saying, "Doing Nothing".

Now if you look at it fairly, by helping the engineer to find a job, the owner of the Consulting Company can charge a "Finder Fee" which can be one-month's salary for each year. Why it should be more than the salary of the engineer and not for one or two months but for the full duration of the project? This is where the help of the organisations like the World Bank and the ADB is needed. Without their direct help, (and may be a direct take) this exploitation cannot be stopped.