Bangladesh’s new anti-graft hotline has been overwhelmed with tens of thousands of calls about alleged acts of corruption in its first week, an official said yesterday.
Hotline number 106 was launched on Thursday last week by state authorities in an effort to crack down on graft in Bangladesh, which has been listed by a global watchdog as one of the world’s most corrupt nations.
“Since July 27 around 75,000 people called our hotline,” Bangladeshi Anti-Corruption Commission spokesman Pranab Kumar Bhattacharya told reporters.
The hotline is staffed by just five government employees, with a substantial number of calls being forwarded to a voicemail messaging system.
Bhattacharya said most callers who got through had complaints that were beyond the agency’s jurisdiction, including personal family disputes and dowry demands.
The commission is empowered to investigate bribes in government offices and agencies, misappropriation of state assets or money, embezzlement of state funds, amassing of wealth through illegal means, money laundering and bank fraud.
More than 200 relevant complaints were forwarded to the commission to investigate.
Local English daily the New Age said that most complaints were against land record offices, followed by utility services, state-run hospitals, government-run schools and railway and road transport authorities.
“Most complaints are related to land,” Rajib Ahsan, an official at the commission’s hotline cell, told reporters.
Some women had complained of dowry demands from their husbands, he said.
Last year Bangladesh was ranked as the 13th most corrupt nation in the world, according to the graft perception index prepared annually by Berlin-based Transparency International.
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