The finance minister has made a very frank admission about government officials taking bribe to award contract to a foreign company for expansion of the Dhaka-Sylhet 4-lane Project. We commend him for it and for further taking a very stringent measure by blacklisting the company and scrapping the contract. However, this is not a unique incident in Bangladesh or a one-off case. Bribery is a pervasive phenomenon that has come to be accepted as a way of life and must be uprooted. In such a situation it is praiseworthy that the government is acknowledging corruption and bribery as problematic and taking measures against some of those engaged in this criminal offence. We are also told that the sum paid as bribe has been returned to the Chinese embassy.

The action of the ministry so far is all very good, but the question is what has become of the government officials who took the bribe? We do not know whether they been subjected to the legal process that the severity of the case demands.  Taking bribe is a criminal offence and must be dealt with as such, and the errant officials must be made examples of. Moreover, it is necessary also to identify the local agents who have worked as go-between the officials and the foreign company in facilitating  the transactions.

This particular deal was one of the 26 projects for which soft loans had been promised by China. Care should be taken that the other projects under the deal where China had promised to give soft loans of $21.5 billion, are not hampered.