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TO THE EDITOR
Violent students
There was a news report in The Daily Star about the CU students who staged destructive protests over the death of a fellow student who was crushed under the wheels of the university shuttle train after he attempted to jump from a foot over-bridge on to the roof of the moving train. His jump turned into a nightmare as he failed to maintain balance and fell through the gap between two compartments. In reaction to his premature death, the students barricaded the station and torched its furniture, railway office, police rooms and train compartments. The students - demanded Tk 30 lakh compensation to the family of the ill-fated student, removal of the VC and exemplary punishment for the ‘■guilty” railway employees.
It is understood from the news that the student was killed due to his extremely unsafe adventure i.e. jumping from a foot over-bridge on to the roof of the moving train. Yet the students violently reacted against the people who are apparently not responsible for the incident. In the recent past we have witnessed similar violent protests in different educational institutions. These students are our sons, daughters, brothers & sisters and they are very often termed the “conscience" of the nation. But their activities are sending some red signals for all of us (parents, teachers, general students & the government) telling that the “nation's conscience" is infected and needs proper treatment.
There is another side of the story. The Daily Star printed a photo on its first page that show’s about 100 DU students sleeping on the floor of the hall mosque as the authorities could not arrange their accommodation in the dormitories. Now there is a non-political government in power but ex-student leaders continue to occupy a large number of hall seats. Can we expect things to improve when the next political government takes over?
Engr. Md. Aminul Hoque Khalishpur, Khulna
Serious concerns
a) The leaders of the AL are only concerned about Hasina. They are unable to work to protect the interests of the millions of Bangladeshis without their leader Hasina. The AL fought to create Bangladesh, and in 1971, we all fought even in the absence of our leader
Bangabhandhu. Through the years, the AL must have created many leaders with true vision and wisdom to run the country.
b) The leaders of the BNP seem to be unable to take part in the election without Khaleda. For the BNP leaders too, the future of the 150 million is not in the prime focus! The BNP managed to survive after the death of its founder, and the party should now again work to move forward without those in the prison facing various charges. This may in course of time prove to be a healthy development.
c) The CTG has been very uncomfortable with Hasina and Khaleda. The CTG must make a clear statement that no one is above the law— and there can be no exception to this rule! We must not forget that our law did not earlier spare General Ershad for his mistakes!
d) The armed forces are to save the country’ both from external and internal destructive forces. Our internal destructive forces have been our major hindrance to development.
We are going through a period that is offering neither true democracy, nor clear emergency’. The destructive comments from the political leaders are causing confusion among the common people. Sometimes words can cause more harm than bullets!
Let us all work together for the greater cause, a better Bangladesh for our next generation.
Dr Mannan Mridha
Stockholm, Sweden
Religious harmony?
Once again, I am left shaking my head in disbelief as The Daily Star publishes the claim of the nation's leaders that Bangladesh is a country of religious harmony when, bless it, it does not hesitate boldly to inform its readers again and again to the contrary!
Yes, thank God, there is plenty of evidence of an underlying tradition here of a tolerance between faiths. But this underlying tradition is being more and more overlaid by something a great deal more unpleasant that, it seems, rather a lot of people simply do not want to talk about....
The Daily Star recently published the hard evidence produced by painstakingly accurate research, proving that both the Hindu community and many indigenous peoples (all of whom have an equal
claim to be Bangladeshis and whose ancestors have lived here for centuries) have lost huge tracts of their land to all sorts of trickery. Such minorities have left Bangladesh in thousands since independence, hugely reducing the percentage of minorities'.
Even though it has been on inside pages, The Daily Star has also honourably reported, over the last few years, several instances of people from other minority faiths who have been murdered, seriously wounded or threatened by all sorts of bigots and bullies. Regrettably, I have never discovered any follow-up stories to these. Moreover, rather a lot of the minori ities seem to 'buy in' to the assumption that it is only OK to be a minority here, if you keep your head down So everyone keeps smiling and repeating what a tolerant country this is!
A couple of weeks ago the shocking story of the murder of an elderly Buddhist monks was published. Thus I have been watching the columns carefully to see if there would be any follow-up. Yes, indeed, there was - but not the one that I had hoped for. There it was the CA repeating that this was a country of religious harmony, greeting members of the Buddhist community on Buddha Purnima and absolutely no mention at all of the shameful murder of the Buddhist monk and no apologies for it and no assurance that justice would be sought for this action!
Come on, DS! You can do better tlian this!, Areader
One-mail
Oldwine....
It was sometime towards the end of 1968. I was a student of Dhaka University. Once I was walking along the road near Hotel Sheraton. To my surprise, I found hundreds of school children were lining on both sides of the airport road. At some places young girls and ladies wearing colourful sarees were practising some kind of dancing with the national flags in their hands. They were waiting to give a civic reception to General Ayub Khan-the then President of Pakistan. I felt so sad.
Forty years later, on the 15th of May 2008, what greeted my eyes was a widely publicized television news bulletin, I found young maidens wearing red and blue sarees dancing gleefully in the paddy fields of Cheradangi village of
Dinajpur Sadar Upazila- the occasion was the inauguration of the bumper harvest of rice which the Chief Adviser of the present caretaker government happened to grace with due pride and in oneness with the villagers themselves. History repeats itself!
ADU professor
On e-mail
Aprisonerof conscience
It is now an open secret that the Executive Chief of the Pakistani daily 'Frontier Post' has been made victim of an engineered and cooked up case. Thanks to the apex court of the country-- Supreme Court of Pakistan— which con-vetted his death penalty into life imprisonment. Otherwise, everything is possible in this country of ours!!!
Aftab Alam
Advocate (High Court) Swat
Next election
In the upcoming general elections the educated, honest and the reputed politicians must seek nominations from the recognised, registered and revered political parties and after holding of free, fair and credible elections, the majority will form the popular government as treasury members in the Jatiyo Sangsad.
Hopefully, another group of educated, honest and reputed politicians will form the opposition bench in parliament which is no less important in parliamentary democracy.
GolamAshraf
Gulshan, Dhaka
Congrats, GM Rajib!
Rajib, the talented player, obtained his third GM norm from Bangladesh Chess Championship held recently. Earlier, he got his other two norms one from abroad, another from a grandmas-ter chess tourney held in Bangladesh. Rajib has joined the elite grandmaster club of Niaz Murshed, Ziaur Rahman, Rifat Bin Sattar and Al Rakib. It is now a matter of time that FIDE (World Chess Federation) makes an official declaration in this regard.
An elated GM Rajib, after finishing his penultimate game that earned him the required points, expressed his happiness to the cheering audience. And to the querying journalists, Rajib expressed a deep frustration over the limited, rather too limited, enterprises in terms of organising tournaments in the country. He further urged the Chess Federation to hold chess tourneys on a regular basis, and to spread out the game across the country through its supervision.
It is indeed a matter of great regret that chess players do not enjoy any patronization government or private . They lag behind in terms of scaling the required heights. Players in the neighbouring country India have made a phenomenal progress in this field.
However, I congratulate Rajib and wish him all success in materialising his chess drcam ... cheers!
Rafiqul Islam Rime Agrabad, Chittagong In response....
I have read your editorial entitled 'Monga victims to get overseas jobs' and I must salute you for writing on a very important but quite neglected matter. You have just written on a burning issue. The people of monga' affected areas are dying slowly and silently. Instead of protesting, they are fighting with dignity, with courage but they are not doing well because they are very simple or even nai ve
So, they need our help and we should help them Mir Ahidur Rahman
Departmen t of English South East University
A tale of rickshaws
A wonderful weather, gentle breeze-- no doubt you will love to roam around the city by a rickshaw witfi no time limit and no specific destination!!
Now, can someone tell what would be the reasonable rickshaw fare from Mirpur-10 to Pallabi Bus Stand ? Is it Tk. 10 orTk. 15? If it is Tk. 15, I do not mind at all to pay that but if the actual fare is Tk.10, then why should I spend extra Tk 5 everyday!
Such problems with rickshaw pullers are arising almost every day.
I believe that rickshaws should be eliminated, but the process should be a gradual one.
keen Sultana
Dhaka
Why not Obama?
Of course anyone following world news would know the name Barrack Obama. He's the one making, or we can say forcing to make headlines by turning the US presidential campaign more and more interesting. He's not just famous. In Israel, around 95% don't wish Obama to be the president. Nevertheless, an Obama win can rather be beneficial, for most, the Americans as well as even us!
Obama is sure about at least one single fact, that he has the ability to change. He is fighting against someone like Hillary, supported by her loyal party activists, her husband Bill, and her determination to be back in the White House from the time she left. Yet Obama is changing the game, as heis inviting more black voters as they turned out like never before. Obama is an excellent manager. He lost in big states like Philadelphia, Michigan and Ohio but when he did, he assured to get constant endorsements from super-delegates, big wingers like Edward Kennedy, John Jerry and John Edwards.
One can believe that if becomes president, he would probably try to negotiate with countries like North Korea and Iran for peace. Tahsin Hyder Dhaka
Dealing with population boom In the seventies, the population of our country was around eight crore and now it is almost double. But the land mass has not increased even by an inch. On the contrary, a good part of our arable land has been usurped by human habitation, various industrial developments and also erosion of land by rivers during the monsoon. With the present growth rate of population, any sane person would shudder to think about the situation that shall befall the country after 20/25 years.
About a decade ago, 'SPARSC' detected through a satellite that a big land mass is surfacing alongside Bangladesh which is almost the size of our country ! But it's progress is slow and some technical advice was given to accelerate the process. We do not know of any project undertaken by the authorities concerned.
Once in 2/3 years, we read about 'NijhumDiip'(Island that surfaced ten years ago), where living creatures like birds, snakes, frogs had been let loose and also some human habitation has been allowed under the forest department. Unfortunately, the people at the helm of affairs can hardly see the problems right under their nose. We still have to wait for such leaders who have foresight and imagination!
Rumi Ahmed
Teacher
Playpen School Banani, Dhaka
Shocking news
I was a student of Ideal School and College. This school is still regarded as the best educational institution of our country due to its strict discipline and academic performance. The teachers of Ideal School are also very qualified and they teach us not only about the educational matters, but also how we can become good human beings.
Recently, 1 came to know from a newspaper report that a teacher had been suspended from die school because of alleged corruption charges against him. That was shocking news to me.
NazmusSaquib Dept, of English Stamford University Dhaka
Separate pay scale for BB employees?
Two news items published on 19-05-2008 in 'The Ittefaq' and 'The Daily Star' have drawn my attention. First, die caretaker government (CTG) is planning to provide a separate pay scale for the employees of Bangladesh Bank (BB) and the second one is that educationists have emphasised the need for raising the salary of teachers at primary level to ensure quality education by attracting meritorious persons to this profession. It is astonishing to me that the CTG is taking steps to implement the first one ignoring the second. And ifit finally happens, a few people will be benefited. But it will obviously create a discrepancy and dissatisfaction among the employees of other government organisations. Because if BB proposed pay scale were implemented, then the salary of third
class employees of BB like drivers, telephone operators etc. will be higher than that of a first class cadre service officer ( First class officers' initial salary scale is Tk 6800--13090 and third class BB employees' proposed initial salary scale isTk 7000-12000). So finding no other option, the employees of other government organisations will also demand a separate pay scale like 'Judiciary employees' pay scale', 'University teachers' pay scale', 'RAB pay scale', 'Administrative cadre sendee pay scale' and so on. As a result, the aim of the national pay scale will not be attained. But it is a matter of regret mat the area the CTG should give much more attention to remains ignored.
Now a government primary school teacher is paid less than the salary of an upper division clerk of a government office and the salary of a non-government primary school teacher is even more measly. As far as I know it is only Tk 750. But all these primary’ school teachers are playing a vital role in nation building. If the CTG take steps to ensure a separate pay scale for BB employees without enhancing the salary’of other professions, particularly the primary school teachers, the whole nation will have to pay for it in future.
If the CTG has to take a decision /
on the issue, then primary school teachers should get the preference.
K. M. Kamruzzaman Selim
PhT) researcher
KyungpookNational University
South Korea
Achievements of CTG
I think the present caretaker government will be remembered for its bold steps against corruption, along with the noble effort of cleansing the mess as well as the separation of judiciary from the executive.
But the present situation is difficult for them and their popularity is decreasing.
The government should concentrate on controlling the price hike.
Nazir Sabri
Asian University
Uttara, Dhaka
Dacoity
We live in a village in Nawabganj where dacoity is taking place regularly.
The law enforcers should look into the matter with a view to rescuing the locals.
Baku! Chandra Kabiraj
BBA. University of Dhaka