Dhaka, 9th October 2011. Today eighteen civil society rights group leaded by EquityBD formed a human chain and rally in front of national press club and demanded that the government must aware of conspiracy and corruption trap, and they urged to reconsider all climate fund to form a single autonomous board as also to make World Bank out of climate finance. They group have also urged, this as the right solution while government is already in a lot of public question in respect of transparency in climate fund disbursement. The group consists APON, ASOW, CSRL, On Line Knowledge Society, EquityBD, Lead Trust, NCCB, BUP, Bangladesh Bhumihin Somity, Bangladesh Krishok Federation, Jatiya Sramik Jote, SIRAC Bangladesh, Humanity Watch, DCI, PRAN, SDO, SUPRO, and VOICE. The rally was moderated by Mostafa Kamal Akanda of EquityBD; other speakers of the rally are Mizanur Rahman Bijoy of NCCB, Prodip Kumar Roy of On Line Knowledge Centre, Syed Aminul Haque of EquityBD, Fakhrul Ferdous of DCI, Mohin Ahmed of Bangaldesh Krishok Federation, and Farhana Akther of SUPRO.
Prodip Kumar Roy of On Line Knowledge Center mentioned that government has already raised a lot of question on transparency of climate fund disbursement; he also mentioned that there is hardly any information on what World Bank is doing on Bangladesh Climate Change Resilience Fund. He urged the government to reconsider the two funds (BCCTF and BCCRF) for amalgamation in a single fund management i.e. to form an autonomous board like PKSF.
Fokrul Ferdous of DCI mentioned that, it is an international conspiracy that government is maintaining such a questionable fund management so that World Bank will have the means and space to finger corruption, thus justify her claim to manage the fund. And in fact which will strengthen World Bank conditionality leverage to open our market for multi national companies and to make our country in more indebt ness.
Sayed Aminul Haque of EquityBD has criticized the present formation of two climate fund board, which he term as mere Government Ownership. He proposed alternative term “Democratic Ownership” i.e., the board should also consist of member of parliaments from opposition, representative from media, local government and climate victims. He suggested four following steps, government to follow in already disbursed projects, i.e., in each of disbursed project there should have (i) corruption risk assessment, (ii) information disclosure policy, (iii) complain response mechanism and (iv) participation index in all implementation level.
Download Related Paper [Bangla_press] [English_press] [Position Paper]
