TDS Desk:

For the last six years, a strong illegal syndicate was formed around all the projects and work orders of Bangladesh Telecommunications Company Limited (BTCL) of Posts and Telecommunications Division (PTD), under the leadership of former PTD minister Mustafa Jabbar.

This syndicate consisting Ahmed Mushfeq Anam, Managing Director of X-Far; Delowar Hossain Faruk, Chairman and Managing Director of Radisson Digital Technologies Ltd., former Student league and Jubo league leader; Asaduzzaman Chowdhury, previous Managing Director (Additional charge); and Dr. Rafiqul Matin, former MD of BTCL; Mohiuddin Ahmed, President of Bangladesh Mobile Phone Consumers’ Association have been working behind the scenes in order to get illegal benefits.

It is to be noted that, Faruk was sent behind bars in 2011 for printing fake currency. It is known that Faruk had printed the fake currency from the press of Mustafa Jabbar, former minister of PTD. Faruk never revealed the details of the press Despite being in remand several times during his imprisonment. Eventually, from that period Faruk has become trustworthy person of Jabbar. And after his release Faruk has started to utilize the power of Jabbar by mobilizing the syndicate and taking benefits of floated tender in BTCL.

Syndicate formed by Faruk around BTCL, completely took the control of BTCL, manipulated the tenders and looted thousands of crores taka by siphoning project funds. In the last several years, no one was able to get any work order or awarded tenders from BTCL without giving huge amount of bribes or benefits to this syndicate.

Modernization of Telecommunications Network (MOTN) project was designed for modernizing and expediting the process of digital connectivity. This project hit a snag at the very beginning as there were wide allegations of irregularities while awarding this project to ZTE flouting standard rules. A hue and cry ensued at that time regarding favoring ZTE, as the bidding price the company offered was inconsistent.

BTCL previous Managing Director Md. Asaduzzaman Chowdhury was the Project Director of MoTN project. And under his direct involvement lots of corruption and mismanagement happened in this project. Whatever ZTE needs to supply and deploy as per technical specification ZTE didn’t provide the equipment up to the mark and provided cheap and low-quality products. Even PD forced other team members to shut up their voices and release all payment to ZTE without having proper PAT (Provisional Acceptance Test). Even with the help of PD Asaduzzaman ZTE didn’t provide underground copper and OFC cables properly. Due to this huge mismanagement and corruption now, this project didn’t reach to its goal and BTCL is not getting any revenue with this project

Previous Secretary of PTD, Abu Hena Morshed Zaman identified the syndicate and manipulation and declared his fight against this this syndicate. So, “Development of Optical Fiber Cable Transmission Network of BTCL for 5G” has become an exceptional case here.

As per rules and regulation, the project tender notice was published on 15 Sep, 2022 in a few national dailies. And on Dec 20, 2022 the tender opening committee formed with three members opened the tender as per rule (7) of PPR-2008.

It was found that Nokia, Huawei and ZTE Corporation, these three bidders submitted tenders. Under the rule (8) of PPR-2008. With the approval of the Board of Directors of BTCL, an evaluation committee consisting of seven members was formed for the project package GD-1 with representatives from BUET, Police, Telecom and the Ministry.

The Tender Evaluation Committee considered the three bidders participating in the Technical Evaluation as Technically Responsive. And after all, it was found that Huawei submitted the lowest bid of Tk326 crore, according to BTCL sources. The second lowest bidder, ZTE offered a price of Tk415 crore. The third bidder, Nokia offered a price of Tk579 crore.

But in between, before this commercial price opening, the syndicate had understood that their beneficiary would not get the award. So, they kept no stone unturned to cancel this tender.

The HOPE was also wasting time in opening the commercial bid. After receiving the technical evaluation report from the technical evaluation committee, BTCL/HOPE seek an explanation about the two bidders and when the TEC submitted the report, he rejected that without any solid logic.  Rather, he sought clarification from TEC regarding the Experience Certificate of 2nd and 3rd bidders. Even after TEC provided an explanation regarding the accuracy of the clarification and compliance with the relevant clause of the tender, the tender proposals of all three bidders were canceled by HOPE.

The HOPE did not involve the

PE in this process as well. And when BTCL 213th BoD meeting criticized this decision of HOPE and asked him to solve this matter, then again on August 27, 2023 he raised a new lame reason to disqualify the 1st and 2nd bidder. Most importantly, the HOPE also does not have authority to take this kind of decision for this kind of large tenders. His authority is up to BDT 15 crore scale tenders.

Finally, CPTU review panel found all the bidders responsive and HOPE guilty. Later on, Asaduzzaman filed a case at high court regarding the issues and the court also ordered BTCL to follow CPTU review panel’s judgment.

On the other hand, the former Minister of Posts and Telecommunications Mustafa Jabbar, without any logical reason, indulged in an attempt to cancel this tender. On April 24, 2023 ZTE submitted a fabricated complaint letter to the minister directly, violating the policy, regarding the technical capacity of the equipment with the intention to cancel and re-issue the tender. Jabbar sent a letter to PD asking to review the specification though he was the approver of this project and specification, suddenly he sent a forwarding letter asking the committee to re-assess the tender specification.

After all these, the justice prevailed and the tender was not canceled, BTCL decided to go with the lowest bidder with an cost. Finally, BTCL and Huawei signed the contract in Nov, 2023.

It is forecasted to complete the rest of the works within next six months. After completion this project, the largest transmission backbone network will be ready to cater on going 4G & upcoming 5G technology related services which will be provided by telecom operators such as Teletalk, GP, Robi, Banglalink and other related organizations. It will be also capable to bear the bandwidth of upcoming any submarine cable.

Opportunity to save Tk137 crore from the estimated It will also boost the revenue of BTCL greatly. It will also help Bangladesh to embrace 5G where this country is already lagging behind by five years comparing the other countries.

But the old syndicate has become active again to cancel the project and destroy the growth. As recent initiatives, the same syndicate has been publishing fake news in few media, spreading the rumors, and influencing officials to mislead interim government and cancel the whole process.

After a lot of challenges when finally, this project is going to see light then creating new questions, what will be the future of it? That still remains uncertain.