Why such luxurious vehicles for UNOs?

A cabinet committee on economic affairs recently approved a proposal to procure 50 'Pajero Sports QX Jeeps' for upazila nirbahi officers (UNO), with each costing Tk 9.4 million. The total cost for buying the vehicles will be Tk 470 million while they will be procured directly from state-owned Progati Industries Limited under the direct procurement method (DPM).
The meeting said the motor lifetime of the existing jeeps that were procured earlier by the government transport department in 2006-2007 has already been over and the regular administrative activities of the upazilas are being hampered due to those old vehicles.
It is very normal for the government to provide its officials with vehicles to help discharge their duties. But we wonder why in this procurement there was no open tender. The cabinet has argued that there were little time. But this procurement plan was nothing new.
The parliamentary committee on public administration ministry of the 10th parliament in its 29th meeting had recommended buying jeeps for the UNOs. But why did the parliamentary body spent so much time to move? Had they taken the decision much earlier, they could have bought the vehicles courtesy of an open tender.
The second question, which is the most important one, is - what types of vehicles will the officials get? The one being procured for the UNOs are usually provided to the additional secretaries. The UNOs are officers of the sixth grade whereas the additional secretaries are from the second grade. Senior officials will now demand more pricey cars or jeeps.
The argument we hear is that the UNOs work during all the elections and they need to go to even the most remote areas. But the other government officials can say the same.
We hear there is a cold war behind the procurement of these luxurious vehicles. The police officials at the grassroots level use such jeeps and that is why officers of the admin cadre want them too. The finance ministry had wanted to buy jeeps worth Tk 5.7 million each. But the public administration ministry did not pay heed to that.
They have now approved procurement of 50 vehicles. There are 464 upazilas in the country. This will take a few more financial years to buy these jeeps for all the upazilas.
It will be very unfortunate if the government has to buy luxurious vehicles just because of cold war between its senior officials. And the decision comes at a time when the state coffer is suffering from huge revenue deficit. The more they spend on unproductive sectors, the less funds will be available for the development sector.
This trend of buying luxurious vehicles has to stop.