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To the Editor...
*** Letters for publication in these columns should be addressed to the Editor and legibly written or typed with double space. For reasons of space, short letters are preferred, and all are subject to editing and cuts. Pseudonyms are accepted. However, all communications must bear the writer's real name, signature and address. ***
Zakat fund and beggary
Sir. On 19th August our Prime Minister handed over 69 rickshaws on behalf of Zakat Board to some poor people of Dhaka district. The Zakat Board plans to distribute 250 rickshaws this year. The programme of the Zakat Board also includes distribution of sewing machines, running of "Maktabs". children hospitals and orphanages, and award of scholarships to poor but talented students. From the resport of the rickshaw distribution ceremony as appeared in your esteemed dally, it seems that the activities of the Zakat Board has been recast keeping in view the national priorities. The programmes of the Zakat Board as mentioned above are no doubt national priorities, and that is why the Bangladesh Rural Development Board, and the Departments of Social Wal far, Women Affairs. Health and Education have similar programmes to be financed out of grants received from abroad or of Government revenues. Many NGOs have also some of these programmes. If we think of national priorities then abolition of beggary should be the most Important and perhaps
the only priority. Can we not try to abolish beggary by utilising Zakat fund?
Every year the number of baggers is increasing as a consequence of flood, cyclone, river erosion etc. In the cities and big towns you cannot miss beggars. It becomes shameful when 1 see that a foreigner cannot walk in the streets without being pestered by some beggars.
In most of the western countries-begging is forbidden by law. Abolition of beggary should thus be the most priority area for Zakat Board. The Board should not extend Ils present programme In future years and Instead, draw up a ten or fifteen years' scheme for confining the beggars in the baggers-home established in cities and towns. Some of these homes should be developed as small scale industries leaving some others for those who are crippled completely. Simultaneously a law may be passed forbidding beggary in areas to be notified by the government when beggars' homes are developed in that area. By the end of ten or fifteen years the whole country may be cov ered. The Zakat Board may or ganlse a separate administra-
Uvc body to run these baggers' homes
In absence of beggars in the street, more and more people will come forward to give their Zakat to the Board. If "we can abolish beggary with the Zakat fund then we can prove to the world the superiority of one of the five tenets of Islam.
A A G Kabir
Juar Shahara. Dhaka
Recruitment in MES
Sir, Military Engineering Service (MES) is a civil department attached to Defence Services for execution of development works. A good number of Diploma Engineers have been serving there on casual basis for a pretty long lime — many of them for a decade or so. But instead of regularising them first, many outsiders have been inducted through so called departmental examina-tion^
It is felt that the departmental examination. If any. should be restricted to the inservice engineers with a certain length of service. Justice demands that once the qualified inservice engineers arc absorbed and regularised, only then outsiders should be considered.
I, therefore, appeal to the Chief of Army Staff and the Ministry of Defence to look Into the matter and save the Inservice dlplonui engineers of MES from frustration.
Shamlm Hussain Mtrpur, Dhaka