UNHCR imports dozens of vehicles without permission

DOT Desk: The UNHCR office in Bangladesh allegedly have imported several dozen of vehicles illegally evading import duty and got those vehicles released in connivance with a section of local officials, reports The New Age.
Allegations have it that the UN refugee agency also provides most of its vehicles holding diplomatic number plates to people serving government and non-government agencies for their use. The National Board of Revenue has launched an investigation into the allegations, its chairman Mosharraf Hossain Bhuiyan told New Age on Sunday.
‘We have launched an investigation following a letter sent by the foreign affairs ministry,’ said Mosharraf, also senior secretary to the Internal Resources Division.
Any international organisation or person serving a foreign organisation that enjoys diplomatic exemption and protection requires written permissions before importing any vehicle with exemption from duty, releasing vehicles from ports and getting registration of the vehicles, officials said.
The UNHCR has imported 57 vehicles to Bangladesh without any such permission, they said, adding that the UN refugee agency ‘managed to get the vehicles released’ from ports and started using them with plated inscribed ‘Applied For Registration (AFR)’ in absence of registration plates breaching internationally practiced diplomatic provisions.
The UNHCR has already got 72 vehicles registered holding diplomatic number plates (yellow), officials said, adding that most of those 72 vehicles were being used by government officials and several international NGOs.
UNHCR Bangladesh spokesperson Joseph Surjamoni Tripura claimed in an e-mailed reply on Monday that the UNHCR applied in June 2018 to the foreign ministry for bringing in 57 vehicles from its ‘stockpile’ in Dubai for the deployment of the government counterparts such as Refugee Refugee Relief and Repatriation Commissioner, district administration, fire service and police in Cox’s Bazar and UNHCR and partners to meet emergency needs amid influx of Rohingyas into Bangladesh from Myanmar.
The foreign ministry informed the UNHCR in August 2018, according to Tripura, that the ministry would not grant permission ‘for bringing in the vehicles’ as vehicles with diplomatic number plates could not be used by government entities or by any other UNHCR partner.
The UNHCR ‘immediately took initiatives for cancelling the order to deploy and not placing any new vehicles,’ he said, adding that unfortunately the vehicles were already sailed and 46 of the 57 reached Bangladesh by that time. The UNHCR was able to cancel request for 11 vehicles which were still underway of dispatching that time.
He said that the ‘vehicles are under “Applied For Registration (AFR)” plates as we are waiting for the government’s approval.’
On the use of the vehicles by non-diplomatic entities and people, the UNHCR official said that the UN refugee agency ‘had to give the Right of Use (RoU) of the yellow plated vehicles’ to its partners ‘with whom UNHCR has a proper project partnership agreement’.
Government officials said that the UNHCR could still use those vehicles for their staff paying appropriate import duty.