Editorial
BSTI must suffer consequences
for gross negligence
The fallout from the use of contaminated milk in infant formula and dairy products from China is widening fast, with over 54,000 children now believed to be sick after being fed products containing the toxic chemical melamine. As the extent of the contamination unravels, with a variety of products such as cookies and candy now thought to have been contaminated as well, the Bangladesh government has been slow to respond to the crisis.
The military-controlled interim government woke up to the reality of toxic Chinese baby milk almost a week after the scandal broke in China and the foreign press reported that at least three of the companies in question have exported their infant formula to Bangladesh, among other countries. A week since, the test results for a numbers of brands of imported milk formula from China are yet to be available, and officials say the test results may be available only after the Eid festival and holidays.
While it is understandable that the Bangladesh Standards Testing Institute, the government’s food standards watchdog, has long been neglected and may lack the expertise and technical equipment to carry out these tests, the agency should have opted to have these tests carried out abroad or in private laboratories if this could speed up the process. While millions of children in Bangladesh could potentially be sick or dying from kidney stones as a result of being fed this toxic milk, it is criminal for the government to drag its feet, and the BSTI to decide to return to their work only after the Eid holidays. This irresponsible behaviour both by the cabinet, which has perhaps allowed the lack of local media interest to dictate its own apathy on the issue, and the BSTI deserves contempt and action at the highest levels. A top official of the BSTI has admitted to New Age confidentially that it was the institute’s responsibility to test these milk products before they were marketed locally, according to a report published on Sunday. If this is so, why is no one being held accountable for negligence that may have resulted in thousands of sick or dying children that a shambolic state healthcare system cannot identify a trend for.
This is not the first time that the BSTI’s lack of capacity or responsibility has been taken advantage of for the marketing of products, many of them to children, that cause sickness and perhaps even death. But in showing a clear lack of urgency in delivering these milk test results in the shortest possible time, this government agency has demonstrated that even if its technical capacity were up to speed, its lack of accountability would have resulted in a similar outcome anyway. Today, even as we demand that the government do whatever is necessary to see the test results delivered before the Eid holidays to relieve millions of anxious parents, heads must roll within the BSTI for there to be consequences of such gross negligence.
In praise of holidays
Every year in the days preceding the Eid festivals, activity in government establishments as well as in other sectors tends to sink to a low gear. The same is being witnessed this year. Activities in all areas are at a low ebb except in those that are directly related to the Eid celebration – at shops and markets, etc. It is also a common practice to prefix or suffix the official holidays by a few days of personal leave. On Sunday when many government employees had already left the city for their village-homes, New Age reported that thin attendance was expected in government offices. And after the Eid holidays are over a government office usually takes a longer time to get into its stride as hangover from the vacation mood persists for several days if not weeks. After government offices reopen on 4 or 5 October, we will undoubtedly see in the newspapers the same familiar photographs of unmanned desks, empty office rooms and small numbers of staff-members, gathered in pockets, gossiping in the corridors.
Those who think that this undermines the work culture and brings serious harm to the country’s economy and wellbeing in today’s highly competitive world will want such lackadaisical practices to be ended forthwith. Some others may take a more indulgent view considering that the common people in this country possess too few recreational outlets and should be allowed the indulgence of taking an extra few days off to spend with their families. While work is important and everyone should be conscientious about their work, we also feel that leisure and recreation are very important and that a healthy balance between work and leisure needs to be struck.
It may also be argued that leisure creatively spent can be as valuable as work. What would be the state of human civilisation if the Greek philosophers spent 48 hours a week discharging their official duties, or Karl Marx spent his daytime working in a merchant office in London instead of poring over books in the British Museum library? It would be relevant to refer to Bertrand Russell’s essay ‘In praise of idleness’ where the writer says that immense harm is caused by the belief that only work is virtuous and also stresses that without a considerable amount of leisure a man is cut off from many of the best things of life.
It should not be construed that we are condoning absenteeism and indolence but there are ways of looking at a phenomenon. In our view what is important is not the number of holidays but efficiency and output. The Eid season does not last long; a government employee should be made more efficient and accountable in his everyday work and he must also be able to strike the right balance between work and leisure.
NATIONAL ID CARDS
In the interest of surveillance?
The current regime’s voter registration list has, in all probability, lessened the likelihood of fraudulent votes. But it also has, in all likelihood, laid the groundwork for installing a new regime of surveillance, one that will be deployed against the citizens of Bangladesh, writes Rahnuma Ahmed
Official: ‘You ought to have some papers to show who you are.’
Protagonist: ‘I do not need any papers. I know who I am.’
Official: ‘Maybe so. But others are also interested in who you are.’
— Kafkaesque journey of American sailor who has lost his identity papers, B. Traven, The Death Ship (tr. 1934)
A non-fraudulent voter list, ‘a priceless gift to the nation’
Praise was due. And it was given.
Ms Renata Dessallien, UN resident coordinator and UNDP resident representative, at a function marking the celebration of the successful completion of voter registration, organised by the Election Commission on July 22, spoke of it in glowing terms. It was ‘a truly historic achievement,’ because never before ‘have so many people been electronically registered in such a short time,’ in any other country in the world. What was impressive was the immense scale of the undertaking, the accuracy of the list, the elimination of duplicate and fraudulent entries. ‘If there were a Nobel Prize for voter lists, Bangladesh would be the clear winner!’
The chief adviser Dr Fakhruddin Ahmed termed it a ‘milestone,’ one that would enable not only the upcoming elections to be ‘free, fair and credible’ but also, future ones, by setting high standards. The chief election commissioner ATM Shamsul Huda, called it a ‘memorable event in the annals of country’s history.’ At an earlier event, ‘Celebrating the halfway mark of voter registration,’ held in early March, the chief of army staff, General Moeen U Ahmed had voiced hopes that it would ‘lay the foundation for building a meaningful democracy.’
A similar nationwide voter registration venture had failed in 1997 because the names and pictures of most people did not match, and many had failed to turn up to register at the appointed time. The nation, as a result, had been Tk 115 crore poorer. A proposed integrated project of Machine Readable Passports (MRP) and National Identity Cards (NID) in 2005 had been budgeted at Tk 1,400 crore. Its completion would take 5 years, the first year would be a ‘test’ period. The 2006 voter list, prepared by the past CEC Justice MA Aziz for the 2007 elections had been faulty, it had registered an excess of 1.2 crore voters, leading to a political impasse that helped usher in the current military-backed Fakhruddin government.
In comparison to all previous efforts, the current effort has yielded a faultless voter list, one that is computerised, consisting of a data-base of 80 million 500 thousand 723 voters with photographs and fingerprints. It has cost only Tk 424 crore, one-third of the 2005 estimate, and has been successfully completed in a mere 11 months. The Election Commission was the sponsor and the coordinating agency, the Bangladesh army was the operational agency. Together they coordinated the huge logistics in a ‘very tight time frame’, as major general Shafiqul Islam, military secretary, Bangladesh Army, said in an interview, `we required 12,000 laptops to be deployed throughout the country, 8,000 printers, paper, toner, train a staff of 18,000 computer and enrollment personnel, in a situation where on an average data was collected on 300,000 to 400,000 people daily.’ The resulting electoral rolls, perhaps one of the largest electronic databases in the world, will definitely be the largest among developing countries.
A survey of the voter registration process funded by the UK department for international development (DFID) announced it to be of international standard, in the words of one of the consultants, ‘a list of quality no less than that of America or England.’ The UN is said to be considering replicating this model in other developing countries.
The current voter list, as one of the national English dailies commented in its editorial, is ‘a priceless gift to the nation.’
The National ID Card, ‘an offshoot’
The EC project was titled the Preparation of Electoral Roll with Photographs and Facilitating the Issuance of National Identity (ID) Card. In the words of Mike DePasquale, chief executive officer of BIO-Key International Inc, a US-based company which is a leader in finger-based biometric identification and wireless public safety, the NID was ‘an offshoot’ of the voter registration project - a ‘co-operative venture’ between BIO-Key in the US, Tiger IT in Bangladesh, and the Bangladesh army.
Brigadier general (retired) Shahedul Anam Khan, a defence analyst, thinks the government did well to undertake both projects simultaneously. Up to a stage, ‘the modalities involved for the preparation of both,’ like basic data collection and cross checking, are similar. The ID card was a ‘spin-off,’ which, if it had been put off for later, would have cost more.
But, for people on the ground, the two were not as separable. M Sakhawat Hussain, one of the Election Commissioners, puts it in words closer to how we, as potential voters, experienced it, ‘No one will be listed as a voter without the registration of the name on the electoral roll and no one will get the national ID card.’
Advocates of e-government are also advocates of national ID cards, for instance Farooq Sobhan, M Shafiullah and others write in a Study of eGovernment in Bangladesh (Bangladesh Enterprise Institute, April 2004), ‘Bangladesh should take active steps to initiate a project for national ID,’ because it will provide an important base for the provision of eGovernment services ‘efficiently and in a personalised way,’ to citizens who will have unique ID numbers. I came across several Bangladeshi bloggers who seemed to hold similar views. According to one, it would be ‘a solution to many problems,’ a national database would hold information from voter lists to tax records, it would make easier many tasks from machine-readable passports to criminal investigations. According to another, the digitisation of national-level information would make governance procedures ‘more scientific.’
The EC has drafted an ordinance making national ID cards mandatory for citizens, ‘for getting any services from the government, its departments and institutions or from any statutory government offices.’ Twenty two services are listed, these include the issuance and renewal of passport, driving licence, trade license, tax identification number, business identification number and bank account. It also states that nobody will get government subsidy facilities, allowance and relief if they do not have identity cards. Very recently, the council of advisers approved the formation of the National Identity Registration Authority Ordinance 2008. It authorises the home ministry to provide national ID cards. Under the proposed ordinance, the EC will hand over all information that has been collected - data and biometric features of the citizens - to NIRA, a statutory body. The ordinance declares false information, forgery, having more than one ID card a criminal offence, punishable by three months to seven years rigorous imprisonment, along with monetary fines.
That confusion exists among people in general — the beneficiaries of the national ID card — was revealed during the four city corporation and nine pouroshobha elections held recently. Voters had come to the polling centres with their national ID cards, and were confused over why the serial number of their ID cards did not tally with the voter serial numbers. This resulted in delays in vote casting, and in long queues. Voter identity cards had been given in the 90s, or torn-off slips containing registration numbers, and as a newspaper report states, during the recently-held local-level elections, the common perception had been that the `ID card was to be used for voting purposes.’ Reports say, polling officers had been similarly confused. M Shakhawat Hossain, election commissioner, blamed the media for publicising what in effect was a ‘national ID card’, as a ‘voter ID card’, even though, according to him, the EC had carried out a huge campaign to clarify the differences between the two.
The ‘largest biometric database in the world’
What is less public knowledge is that the four fingerprints of each voter that was captured with BIO-key’s fingerprint ID software, and FBI-certified fingerprint readers, has already generated over 300 Million ISO fingerprint templates. Combined with the 400 million projected to be generated, it will become by far the largest biometric deployment in the world.
Duplicate registrations are being accurately identified says Ziaur Rahman, managing director of Tiger IT BD Ltd. (Tiger IT), a company that is a leader in both prepackaged and customised software solutions and was BIO-Key’s ‘systems integrator on the ground,’ at a speed of ‘one million matches per second on a single processor.’ Tiger IT Bangladesh’s website provides further information on the national ID card (by the way, the domain tigeritbd.com was registered as recently as August 2007). The card includes a standard barcode which is encoded with ISO fingerprint templates, and PKI digital hash. These can be used to quickly verify the identity of the cardholder while ensuring the integrity and authenticity of the ID card. The Cognitec Facial Recognition Software has been used to capture facial images.
While Renata Dessallien enthuses over how ‘modern technology’ enables the prevention of vote theft, and DePasquale prides on how BIO-Key’s patented technology is ‘performing better than anything else in the market for finger matching,’ I have simple questions to ask: who owns my fingerprints? how will it be used? can NIRA transfer it to government departments within Bangladesh without my knowledge? or, maybe even outside the country’s borders? As the British government did when it passed more than 500 samples of DNA to foreign agencies, but when asked ‘no one seemed to know’ to which countries.
The European Commission recently proposed the harmonisation of security features on passports across the European Union. The proposal, introduced in October 2007, requires member states to take measures to introduce biometric features, including fingerprinting, on passports and travel documents. The fingerprints would be stored in a centralised database. The European Union data protection supervisor, Peter Hustinx, who is in charge of safeguarding the personal data and the right to privacy of EU citizens, has expressed his concern since it fails to ‘adequately safeguard the right to privacy of EU citizens.’ He says, the Commission failed to consult with his office prior to submitting the proposal, as required by EU law.
The current regime’s voter registration list has, in all probability, lessened the likelihood of fraudulent votes. But it also has, in all likelihood, laid the groundwork for installing a new regime of surveillance, one that will be deployed against the citizens of Bangladesh.
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