Mostafa Faruk used to work at the Chattogram Election Commission (EC) office, as a data entry operator. But on Friday (Sept 20), Faruk was arrested by the police for unlawfully including Rohingyas in the voters’ list.
Admitting to playing a role in the illegal racket of including Rohingyas in the voting list, he told the police that a permanent staffer of EC, Zainal Abedin, used to bring Rohingyas to him. Later, he used to take their photos, take signatures on digital pad and insert the information to the NID wing. Then, Satya Sundar Dev, working at the main office in Dhaka, used to print the NIDs and send them.
Earlier, on Sept 16, EC officials arrested EC office assistant Zainal Abedin with a laptop.
From his information, police have learnt that several workers who were outsourced were involved in the whole operation of entering names of Rohingyas to poll list and handing out NIDs.
On Sunday (Sept 22), the counter terrorism unit of police called four EC officials for questioning. It was found that all were employed as outsourcing staff.
Since the outsourced workers get low salary and work on a temporary basis, they were lured into illegal work. Often, their salaries were not paid on time which could have induced them to get involved in unscrupulous work involving illegal monetary gains.
District election officer Munir Hossain said: “Working at the data entry level work, they are familiar with all aspects of technical issues and using this advantage, included the Rohingyas to the voters’ list.”
If people are employed on a permanent basis for data entry work then unlawful engagement can be prevented.
“People who are employed permanently will not take any risk.”
At present, a total of 41 outsourcing people are working in 21 upazilas of Chattogram and all are involved in data entry.
Under the project to update voters’ list, another 48 people are working.