Ambassadors’ performance to be reviewed amid poor showing

Amid numerous controversies and poor showing of some ambassadors, the Standing Committee of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs has decided to review the performance of ambassadors. 

The decision was taken at the 31st meeting of the committee in Parliament on Thursday.

"An envoy who will be appointed as an ambassador of a country, must perform his duty properly. To evaluate their work progress, we have developed a system," Foreign Minister AK Abdul Momen told The Business Standard.

Momen, also a member of the committee, said they shared the plan after being asked to do so. 

According to the system, an ambassador has to give his work plan and a roadmap with a timeframe to the standing committee, he said.

He said if any ambassadors failed to do their duty properly, they would be held accountable. "To this end, we made a post for an inspector general (IG) who will monitor the work of all our ambassadors around the world." 

He said though the IG post was made a long time ago, it had remained vacant until recently. The first IG is a former ambassador who will also give advice and recommendations to envoys when needed, he said, without giving any further details. 

Momen said the three key duties of an ambassador were economic diplomacy, public diplomacy, and regional progress and stability. 

Economic diplomacy included employment creation, investment development and business relation development, as well as providing quality service to the citizens, the foreign minister explained. 

Public diplomacy included publicity of Bangladesh's success, Bangabandhu, the liberation war and Bangladesh's history through arranging workshops and seminars. 

"And finally, ambassadors will work with the countries [where they  are deployed] to keep our success stable. We take it as a serious issue as many countries managed to be developed but failed to keep the growth stable afterwards. So to avoid such consequences, we pay heed to development stability and making good relations with the other countries," said Minister Momen.

Many ambassadors had been withdrawn over the years on different charges, including sexual harassment, financial scams, corruption and performance-related issues.

Recently, former ambassador of Bangladesh to the United States Shahidul Islam's contractual appoinment was cancelled with effect from 1 September last.  

The move came in wake of brewing tension in the bilateral relations between the two countries and the imposition of US sanctions on Rab last December. 

Diplomat Mohammad Imran was sent to Washington as his replacement.

In 2014, Bangladesh's ambassador to Greece, Golam Mohammad, was brought back to Dhaka after at least five allegations, including sexual harassment, financial irregularities and corruption, were proven to be true against him.

In 2011, there were accusations against Bangladesh's envoy to Nepal Neem Chandra Bhowmik, including using the flag of another country while travelling in his car, women-related scandals, visa harassment, bribery and even meddling into Nepal's internal affairs. 

Meanwhile, at the beginning of the parliamentary committee meeting on Thursday, the minutes of the previous 30th meeting were confirmed and the implementation progress of the previous decisions was reviewed.

The Ministry of Foreign Affairs gave a report on the implementation progress of the recommendation of increasing  activities of the Bangladesh missions abroad against anti-national propaganda outside the country, and to identify and punish the people involved in such misdeeds.