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