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Bangladesh Parliament Secretariat
Bangladesh Parliament Secretariat (বাংলাদেশ জাতীয় সংসদ সচিবালয়) is a Bangladesh government department responsible for managing and supporting the parliament and the legislative branch. It is located inside the parliament of Bangladesh.[1] Parliament Secretariat is responsible for organizing the oath taking ceremony of members of parliament.[2] It provides information on activities of the parliament to the press through the Public Relation Department.[3][4] It allocates development and travel budgets to members of parliament.[5][6] HistorySpeaker Mohammad Abdul Hamid created an all-party parliamentary body to investigate corruption by staff of the Parliament Secretariat in March 2009.[7] He also had the Comptroller and Auditor General go through all expenditures of the Parliament Secretariat since 1972.[7] In November 2011, the secretariat organized a discussion on population with United Nations Population Fund at the Parliamentary Member's Club.[8] Distinguished Fellow at the Centre for Policy Dialogue Rounaq Jahan described the secretariat in 2012 as understaffed and underfunded while being relatively weak.[9] She called for it to be strenghted and provided with a permanent staff.[9] It build fences around the parliament in 2015, which drew criticism for undermining the architecture of the parliament.[10] The Parliament Secretariat Commission approved 3.28 billion BDT budget in May 2019 for members of parliament to spend.[5] It published Parliamentary Practice and Procedure by Khandaker Abdul Haque, an expert on parliamentary affairs.[11] In 2020, the parliamentary session had to be stopped after around 100 employees of the Bangladesh Parliament Secretariat were infected with COVID-19 at the start of the COVID-19 pandemic in Bangladesh.[12] In 2022, it returned 800 million BDT to the government treasury; the money was saved due to fewer working days during the pandemic.[13] In 2021, the Secretariate disqualified Mohammad Shahid Islam as a member of parliament after he was convicted of a crime in Kuwait.[14] List of secretaries
References
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