Admittedly visionary planning is necessary for effective and successful projects. Given the nature, variation and processes of expenditure on government projects, it seems that policy makers have assumed that discussing the details of project planning is a waste of time. As a result, most of the exorbitant projects amount to nothing. The nature of the recent population census project implemented at a cost of about Tk 16 billion evokes such thoughts.
Under this project, the Bangladesh Bureau of Statistics (BBS) bought about 400,000 tablet PCs (tabs) at a cost of Tk 4.47 billion to collect information on the people. Water resistant bags were purchased at a cost of Tk 30 million to prevent the tabs from getting wet in the rain and 150,000 umbrellas were purchased at a cost of Tk 130 million for just seven days of data collection work to protect the data collectors from rain. Census is over and the tabs are sitting idle now and may go out of order.
Those who were planning to buy tabs did not have time to plan about where they would be used after the census. Now officials want them to be used somewhere as soon as possible. BBS is asking for the concerned ministries’ opinion as to which institutions can the tabs be handed over.
Obviously the plan to buy these tabs was faulty. It has to be looked into whether the purchase of so many tabs without any plans of using those later on after the census serves any quarters’ financial benefits or is purely unintentional. However, be it intentional or unintentional, the tabs will become inoperable if not used. Then a new 'opportunity' may arise to make ‘use’ of those inoperable tabs. That opportunity may serve somebody else’s purpose.
Hopefully, 161,585 applications have been received from BBS and the Ministry of Planning to use these tabs. Those might be useful to them. However, the fate of remaining 239,415 tabs is unknown till now. Some are suggesting that the students who obtained GPA-5 be given the tabs while some other said to give those tabs to the teachers.
Before procuring these tabs with a large amount of money, the authorities should have thought about how they will be used later. Now a measure to make best use of those tabs must be found. Besides, it should be made necessary to submit a clear plan regarding what the related equipment will be used for at the end of the project as a condition for approval of such projects in the future.