Irregularities in voter list printing

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Printing of voter list for the next general election is going on amid allegations of irregularities and wrongdoings in the process.
Of the companies doing the job, some were blacklisted by the Election Commission (EC) earlier, some are inexperienced and a number of others do not have adequate infrastructure for accomplishing such a vital task, sources said.

Blaming a section of EC officials for all this, they alleged that these officials made money through corruption in the tender process for the printing of voter list.

Some companies engaged in printing allegedly do not have their own offices while some either do not have any address or used fake address to obtain work order for the task.

Besides, some inexperienced firms were given work order but experienced ones were ignored.

There are also allegations that EC officials even tampered with or destroyed documents of many experienced printers, attached with their tender bids, to select their favoured companies.

Nasir Uddin, manager of Nilima Printers, said he had submitted with his tender bid documents of his firm’s experience but all those were missing when the tenders were sorted out.

“Some might have torn the papers to make some others qualify for the work,” Nasir alleged, adding a top official of the EC Secretariat was involved in the misdeed.

Some companies alleged the EC did not consider inspection reports of its own teams in giving the work orders.

The EC did not follow properly its criteria for selection of the printing companies, an investigation by The Daily Star shows.

One EC team inspected all the 186 companies that took part in the tender bid for the job.

The inspection report shows 31 of the companies printed voter list in 2000, eight in 1995, five in 1995 and 2000, three worked on sub-contract and four printed supplementary voter list.

According to EC rules, more experienced companies like these were supposed to get work order or a lottery among the 51 should have been held to select the deserving ones, sources said.

But some EC Secretariat officials violated the rules and gave work order to their favoured companies, the sources alleged, giving the names of many of those.

One firm with date-expired trade licence and another which made gross mistakes in printing voter list in 2000 also got the job, they mentioned.

EC inspectors could not verify the existence of another printing firm that got the job since it did not have any address. Its owner, a government employee, was arrested for putting fake voters on the list in 2000.

The then EC secretary blacklisted him and gave orders not to give any work to him or to his company in future.

When contacted last night, EC Secretary Abdur Rashid Sarkar said, “We formed an observation committee and gave the work orders on the basis of its report. What can we do if someone takes the jobs in fake names.”

He went on, “If any mistakes are found, we will make amendments. We will also take actions if anyone is found involved in corruption.”

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