The ministry hired 429 contractors for the earth-filling work of the 61km road construction project from Joydevpur to Madanpur of the Dhaka-Chittagong Highway through Debgram, Bhulta and Nayapur Bazar, meaning each contractor had to fill only 140 metres land.

The move led to lack of competition among the contractors as well as dominance of incompetent contractors and wastage of resources.

Consequently, the quality of the road has been very poor, said the investigation conducted by the Implementation, Monitoring and Evaluation Department (IMED).

Awarding such a task to so many contractors was in violation of the government rules in the first place. The IMED found that the biggest manipulation in the scheme took place in the case of land acquisition.

In the original project, the ministry sought Tk 18 crore for land acquisition but revised it to Tk 48 crore by showing prices of per hectare land 300 per cent higher than in the original project.

"The three- or four-fold hike in land price within only three years of conception of the project is in no way logical," said the IMED report filed at a meeting of the Executive Committee on National Economic Council (Ecnec) chaired by Finance Minister M Saifur Rahman yesterday.

Saifur told the press after the meeting, "We have detected a lot of irregularities in this scheme and recommended that the case should be forwarded to the Anti-Corruption Commission for action."

The Ecnec approved the project in April 1998 and its implementation started in 2000.

In October 2004, the communication ministry sought Ecnec's approval of a revision of the budget increasing it to Tk 349 crore. The Ecnec declined but approved a revised budget of Tk 281 crore in February 2005.

By that time, however, most of the 15 components of the project had exceeded their allocated budgets. Records show that there had been over expenditure in all of these components and hordes of contractors were deployed for all tasks without any good reason.

A part of the project required construction of pavements, the contracts of which were awarded in 97 groups. The authorities deployed 39 contractors for constructing only 10km pavement under Dhaka Division.

Again, the approved revised expenditure for construction of pavement was Tk 41 crore, but the ministry had spent Tk 52 crore.

The approved project sought for three two-lane bridges of total 554m length, but the ministry increased the bridge specifications to four lanes.

For constructing 300m culverts under the project, the authorities were supposed to spend Tk 15 crore but ultimately spent Tk 18 crore.

Besides, the communication ministry unnecessarily added a diversion bridge component, which was not approved in the original scheme, and spent Tk 6 crore for it.