Gifts from satisfied contractors not bribes: Shahe Alam

State Minister for Local Government, Rural Development and Cooperatives Mir Shahe Alam has said that gifts voluntarily given by satisfied contractors to engineers from their profits would not constitute bribery.

The state minister made the remarks while addressing an orientation and training course for assistant engineers of the Local Government Engineering Department as the chief guest at the LGED headquarters in the capital’s Agargaon area on Tuesday.

‘A senior secretary once told me that an engineer does not need to take bribes,’ he said, adding that contractors’ profits were included in project costs and that the quality of work should be ensured.

‘If an engineer promptly inspects and accepts a contractor’s work and processes the bills quickly, and the contractor, being satisfied, then gives the engineer a gift from his profit, that does not fall under the category of bribery. You can accept it,’ Shahe Alam added.

‘It is time for us to rethink these issues. But we must not reach a point where you compromise the quality of work, save Tk 10 lakh and then divide the money, with Tk 5 lakh for ‘you’ and Tk 5 lakh for ‘me’. We must not go down that path,’ he said.

The state minister said he had raised the issue to encourage engineers to consider whether they wanted to follow such practices or maintain professional integrity.

‘You have chosen not to go down that path. You want to remain where you are. That means you have integrity,’ he said.

Bogura-2 lawmaker Shahe Alam has recently faced criticism over the naming of four union parishads after his two sons, a niece and his ancestral home.

Source: New Age