By IANS
Dhaka : The speaker of the Bangladeshi parliament has courted controversy by approving his own medical bill that included treatment abroad – a move that is now being called illegal.
Jamiruddin Sarkar sanctioned a Taka 2.8 million (US$460,000) medical bill, which included expenses on a two-week check-up to Singapore in May 2006. However, such an act is not permissible under the law, reports The Daily Star.
Sarkar apparently approved the bill after the then prime minister Khaleda Zia asked him to do so under the Jatiyo Sangsad Secretariat Act, 1994.
“I decided to pay the medical bill in good faith and on my honest understanding of the law. I will obey any order of the Supreme Court if anybody in future takes legal action against the payment,” Sarkar said in the undertaking, a copy of which was obtained by The Daily Star.
However, experts, including a former speaker and a former comptroller and auditor general (CAG), have said the law does not permit such action.
The speaker enjoys a fixed limit for medical expenses and anything more than that is to be cleared by the government under Special Medical Attention Rules, 1950.
A former government of Sheikh Hasina had cleared Taka 3.5 million for kidney treatment of the then speaker, Humayun Rashid Chowdhury, and Taka 540,000 for the then chief whip Abul Hasnat Abdullah.
But in Sarkar’s case, the Prime Minister’s Office (PMO) had not cleared the bill, but asked him to do it himself under the 1994 law. Sarkar now says that the PMO had not scrutinised the law.
However, former CAG M. Hafizuddin has said that Section 18 of the Jatiyo Sangsad Secretariat Act or any other provision of that law does not permit the speaker to sanction his own bill.
Hafizuddin said that by Sarkar’s own undertaking, he had exercised powers to sanction the medical expenses since Zia did not want to exercise her power under the Special Medical Attendance Rules.
Former speaker Abdul Hamid pointed out that the speaker is entitled to an annual medical allowance of Taka 200,000 in the country. “If the speaker wants to have medical treatment abroad, he will have to bear the expenditure himself, unless he falls sick during an official visit abroad.
“The prime minister however can allocate a special amount of money for the speaker’s treatment abroad,” Hamid said, referring to the speaker and deputy speaker (Remuneration and Privileges) Act.
Although parliament remains suspended in Bangladesh at present, with general elections expected in January 2008, Sarkar remains the speaker under the constitution.