THIS is worrying that the money that government spends on training public servants at home and abroad hardly brings results. The government in 2020–2024 financial years has spent about Tk 188.73 billion on training under development and non-development budgets. But, economists say that a less-than-expected implementation rate of the annual development programme and failures in revenue target achievement are a glaring example of such training having fallen flat. They further say that the harassment that people face in getting services in the health, education, transport, trade and commerce, and other sectors also shows that the efficiency of public servants has not improved. In the 2024 financial year, Tk 50.95 billion was spent on such training, in the 2023 financial year, Tk 39.148 billion, in the 2022 financial year, Tk 27.77 billion, in the 2021 financial year, Tk 28.33 billion and in the 2020 financial year, Tk 40.646 billion. In the 2025 financial year, too, the government has set aside Tk 52.72 billion for training. The spending on overseas training programmes increased since the 2022 financial year after marking a decline in the 2021 financial year because of the Covid outbreak.
Official data show that the number of projects revised in the annual development programme for the 2024 financial year was 429, for the 2023 financial year, 369, for the 2022 financial year, 326 and for the 2021 financial year, 285. A large number of development projects having time and cost overruns, as the figures suggest, show little improvement in project execution capacity. All this suggests a horde of flaws that have defeated the purposes. Many of the training programmes are unnecessary. Reports on training in how to dig out ponds or to cook kedgeree and to manage the distribution appeared in the media in the past. There have been problems with the selection as examples are not rare that public servants are trained a few months before they would retire. Public servants are also sent on study tours to inspect goods that the government buys from companies overseas. The finance ministry is reported not to have put restrictions on study tours and training for civil servants if the entire cost is paid by inviting agencies. But the ministry appears to conveniently forget that the cost of any such trip and training is included in the entire cost that companies overseas sell the products for.
Experts advise making no block allocation for projects that could check against the practice of futile overseas training while the government, especially the finance ministry and the Planning Commission, should step up oversight against such unnecessary tours and the waste of public funds.