Honouring a Dedicated Entrepreneur
— Professor Rehman Sobhan
Quamrul Islam Siddique should be remembered as an outstanding public servant. He built up the Local Government Engineering Department (LGED) into an institution which transformed the rural infrastructure of Bangladesh.
Today, thanks to the work of the LGED, virtually every part of Bangladesh is connected by all-weather roads, which has served to develop a historically fragmented market into an integrated economy.
Siddique demonstrated that public institutions, if led with dedication and creativity, could prove as dynamic as any private institution. The skills developed by Siddique at LGED were deployed by him in other public organizations he served. But it was his tenure at leading LGED, with his emphasis on efficient delivery of clearly visible results, which established LGED as a role model both within Bangladesh and in other developing countries on how to run a well-governed public institution.
It is a tragedy for Bangladesh that Siddique's talents could not be used by the government on a wider canvas and that he did not live longer so that he could continue to serve the people of Bangladesh.
In his work, Siddique demonstrated to the world what truly committed and entrepreneurially talented Bangladeshis are capable of achieving.