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Download PDF An advisory council committee yesterday recommended that the government reconstitute the three-member Anti-Corruption Commission (ACC) to make it functional.
At its inaugural meeting, the seven-member committee on graft also suggested re-screening of the anti-graft body staffers and amending the ACC Act 2004.
It proposed a number of measures to ensure speedy disposal of the corruption cases. Those include setting up special courts, fixing a 45-day time limit for submitting charge sheets and a 60-day for completion of trials.
Coming out of the meeting, committee member and Communications Adviser Major Gen (retired) Abdul Matin told The Daily Star, “The incumbent ACC members must be replaced with the competent ones.”
He said they have decided on some recommendations to be placed before the chief adviser in a couple of days.
With Law Adviser Barrister Mainul Hosein at the helm, the committee has been tasked with identifying the existing legal, administrative and institutional inadequacies in rooting out corruption. It was asked to submit recommendations within two weeks.
“We won’t ask anyone to quit the commission. We are assigned only to recommend ways to make the ACC effective and precisely that’s what we are doing,” Matin said, adding that now it is the government’s responsibility to take steps accordingly.
Sources said the government might ask the ACC members to stand down once the recommendations are formally submitted to the interim administration chief.
ACC Chairman Justice Sultan Hossain Khan yesterday told The Daily Star that the commission members are ready to resign in case of the government asking them to do so.
Since its inception in November 2004, the ACC has remained non-functional, failing to live up to the popular expectations that it would combat corruption boldly and efficiently.
The committee also recommended re-screening of the staff who had been taken in from the now defunct Bureau of Anti-Corruption (Bac).
Matin, also a former director general of the Bac, said there are too many corrupt officials among the several hundred staffers drawn from the no longer existing anti-graft body.
He argued that those who were earlier screened out would also be re-examined, as there might be honest and competent officials among them.
The Bac with 1,271 officials was dissolved in 2004. Of its staff, the ACC took in 33 first class and 52 second class officers, and 658 class III and IV employees.
The cabinet division approved for them an organogram accommodating 650 staff members.
The committee suggested that the organogram should be altered to increase the manpower of the commission.
It feels that some provisions in the exiting Act should also be changed, noted Abdul Matin.
According to the Act, the ACC needs a set of rules for its functioning. But it has yet to have the rules finalised and approved though over two years have gone since its formation.
Addressing a press briefing after the meeting, Barrister Mainul said a set of draft rules would be finalised within a week.
“Soon, there will be special courts set up throughout the country for quick disposal of graft cases,” said the law adviser adding that initially such courts would be set up in the capital.
“The ACC will have its own prosecution unit to move cases in the courts,” he added.
At the briefing, the communications adviser observed that the commission must not remain busy dealing with trivial matters. It would rather be geared to “net the big fish”.
He said the reconstitution process would follow the resignation of the incumbent ACC members.
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