A writ petition was filed on Monday with the High Court seeking its directives about making new award plaques with pure gold and handing over them to the foreign friends of Bangladesh for their extraordinary contributions to the country’s glorious Liberation War in 1971.
Supreme Court lawyer Advocate Manzill Morshed filed the petition on behalf of martyr’s family member Nasrin Ahmed on Monday in the wake of a report published in Prothom Alo regarding the allegations of less gold being used in the award plaques to honour Bangladesh’s war-time foreign friends.
According to the report of Prothom Alo, coinciding with the 40th anniversary of independence, the government had honoured as many as 338 foreign friends, including statespersons, politicians, philosophers, intellectuals, noted citizens and organisations in three phases in recognition to their invaluable contributions to the country’s Liberation War.
According to specification, a gold award plaque was supposed to contain 11.66 grams of gold and a silver crest 351 grams of the white metal. But after test the government Bangladesh Standard and Testing Institute (BSTI) found each gold award plaque to have only 2.63 grams of gold and the so called silver crests had no silver at all.
Each of the award plaque was bought at Tk 266,325.
Advocate Manzill Morshed in the writ petition urged the High Court to direct the government to make new gold award plaques properly and hand over those to the award winners through different Bangladesh embassies and high commissions abroad.
He also urged the court to order the government to realise the bill it paid to the two gold suppliers Amicom and MS Mohsinul Hasan; and use the realised money for newly making the new gold award plaques.
He also sought the High Court order upon the government to form a committee to investigate into the scam and disclose the reports to the publics.
The cabinet secretary, foriegn secretary, additional secretary Golam Mostafa, joint secretary Abul Kashem, deputy secretary Enamul Quader and Dhaka divisional commissioner were made respondents in the petition.
“The writ petition has been filed since the country’s image was tarnished abroad due to the scam. The hearing on the petition is likely to be held on Tuesday,” Manzill Morshed added.
Source: Prothom Alo
How long this shameless exhibition is going to continue wasting taxpayers money? How can leopard change its spot?