Appointment of Commissioner
Telcoms ministry at fault again
Abu Saeed Khan
The telecoms ministry is again found guilty of violating another law. A commissioner of the Bangladesh Telecommunications Regulatory Commission (BTRC) resigned in February last year. Section 13 of the Bangladesh Telecommunication Act, 2001 stipulates that the government has to fill up such a vacancy within 30 days. The ministry is, however, yet to show any respect to this explicit legal provision.Then Awami League government had passed the telecoms law on April 16, 2001. According to the law, the BNP-lead coalition government, after assuming power through October 2001 elections, formed the BTRC and appointed the officials to it on January 30, 2002. All the five commissioners were picked from retired civil servants including the one with controversial track record of tampering with his age in the government's record. Three out of these five commissioners are ex-BTTB officials and the one that had resigned last year belongs to that group. The industry took his resignation as a window of opportunity to inject new blood into the BTRC. The telecoms minister, through whom the BTRC reports, has been, however, busy with fulfilling the wish list of his cabinet colleagues' children on various telecoms deals. As a result, the issue of timely filling the vacant commissioner's post, despite having strict legal obligations, remains at the bottom of the ministry's priority. But the telecoms minister, who is also a lawyer, should be well aware of the consequences of being so oblivious to the law. Has this lawmaker alerted the government about the aftermath of disobeying the law? Circumstantial evidences don't show any sign of such whistle blowing. Moreover, the government has recently created a total vacuum at the top level of the BTRC. According to the telecoms law's subsection 2 of Section 9, the commissioners were appointed for three years and their tenure expired on January 30, 2005. The government should either reappoint the incumbent commissioner(s) or hire a new setup. Neither has been done yet. Remuneration of the BTRC officials has been provisioned at such a low level that competent candidates take no interest in this outfit. Inevitably BTRC became the pseudo-rehabilitation centre of the retired civil servants. Most of its permanent staffs were also hired through nepotism. These issues have ultimately made BTRC utterly dysfunctional. The industry has been nervously waiting for a second setup of BTRC commissioners with qualitative improvements. Given the government's past records, there are many reasons to be skeptic about the appointment of proficient people to lead the BTRC. In spite of it, the government must give merit a chance.
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