Dhaka wasa MD: Never-ending tenure of Taqsem ends!

Taqsem A Khan resigned as the managing director of Dhaka Wasa on Wednesday after being at the helm of the state-owned agency for nearly 15 years marked by many allegations of irregularities.
Taqsem resigned over an email, stating that health problems had rendered him unable to work.
The Local Government Division (LGD) yesterday issued an order mentioning that Taqsem’s tenure has ended and AKM Sahid Uddin, a senior deputy managing director of Dhaka Wasa, would be the new managing director.
Taqsem was appointed Wasa MD on October 14, 2009. His tenure was extended for the seventh time on October 14, 2023.
There are allegations that Wasa supplied contaminated water and overspent funds on projects that did not bear fruit while Taqsem was at the helm.
Many say that the cost of Dhaka Wasa water increased 16 times because of him.
In May 2023, former Wasa chairman Gholam Mostofa wrote a letter to the LGD, highlighting the irregularities at Wasa.
The ministry then responded by promptly removing Mostafa from his post and keeping Taqsem, a US citizen, as the MD.
Mostafa told this newspaper at that time that Taqsem’s monthly salary increased by 421 percent over the years and stood at Tk 6.25 lakh. Even during the Covid-19 pandemic, his salary was bumped by Tk 1.75 lakh.
Talking to reporters at his office yesterday, LGRD Adviser AF Hassan Ariff said, “The stories of his corruption are known to people.”
The corrupt individuals who used to surround Taqsem are still active, he said.
“We will take legal action against them,” he added.
In 2019, Taqsem caused public outrage after saying that Wasa water was fully safe for drinking.
He made the claim at a press conference arranged to refute allegations made by Transparency International Bangladesh (TIB).
TIB, after a year-long study titled “Dhaka Wasa: Challenges of Good Governance and Way Forward”, revealed their findings in April 2019, mentioning how 91 percent of the 2,728 service recipients of Dhaka Wasa water had to boil the water to make it drinkable.
In the process, they burnt gas worth Tk 332 crore a year.
But many Dhaka dwellers are still buying dirty and smelly water, facing acute shortage of drinking water, being deprived of access to the sewerage network, and encountering the same old water logging.
Mizanur Rahman, a resident of Jurain’s Mistir Dokan area, said many of around two lakh residents of Purba Jurain are still facing similar problems and some do not even have running water.
Mizanur is one of a few hundred residents from Jurain, Shyampur, Madhya Badda, Rampura and Tejgaon who demonstrated in front of the Wasa’s Karwan Bazar headquarters on April 23, 2019.
The image of him carrying a jug full of dirty water as a sarcastic gift of “sherbet” to Taqsem is still fresh in the minds of Dhaka residents.
Mizanur and several others held a human chain in front of Wasa yesterday demanding that Taqsem be arrested and punished.
The city dwellers did not get the benefit of Wasa’s treatment plants due to absence of a supply network, experts say.
Widespread corruption and delays in project implementation also plagued Wasa, said a report of the Anti-Corruption Commission in July 2019.
The ACC report said Wasa kept extending deadlines and increasing the costs of projects to create room for corruption.
Corruption and irregularities also took place during the selection of consultants and contractors during revenue collection and overtime bill disbursements, said the report.
Manual metre reading is also an area where cartels have been formed to misappropriate money and deny the government its revenue, said the report that identified eight projects and three areas in Dhaka where corruption took place, and made a 12-point recommendation to prevent graft.