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To the editor
Newoffice timings The recent change in office timings is a good initiative taken by the government primarily to ease traffic congestion in Dhaka city.
Even though it may be too early to comment on the effectiveness of the government initiative, a couple of suggestions, the implementa-tion ofwhich.may yield better results.' U|
Commercial organisations: The timing set is from 10.00am to 6.00pm. Commercial organisations work on the "profit motive" and as such, the longer the hours for them, the better they would be and better would be the economy of the country.
Forcing commercial organisations to start work at 10.00am is, on the one hand, stepping into their space of freedom and also cutting them off from countries which are on the East of Bangladesh, by another effective hour.
Monitoring of the timings by the government whether the commercial organisations are adhering to the government directive or not, is also difficult. Thus commercial organisations may keep on following the earlier timing of 9.00am and closing whenever the work finishes.
We would, therefore, have
both government officials and most of commercial organistions going to office at the same time, negating the effectiveness of the change for easing traffic congestion. Commercial organizations should, therefore, in my opinion, follow 9.00am to 5.00pm office timing.
On the contrary government organisations are supposed to work for the public with 'Service Motive'.
If the timing of government office was changed to 10.00am- 6.00pm that may make more sense. It would be much easier to implement. It would be easier for people, who come from surrounding areas to Dhaka, to reach Dhaka in time, finish their work and leave Dhaka in the evening.
MWazirulAlam Banani, Dhaka
Adulterated paracetamol!
Your court correspondent's front page and important report on the matter published on 24 November indicates the gross slackness and apathy of the prosecution system and the Drug Administration! Was it just negligence or some incentive
from unofficial sources, that encouraged them to remain in the dark, and to calmly ignore this important matter concerning public health and safety?
Will the government enquire into it and punish the concerned officials for their callous indifference?
SA. Mansoor
Dhaka birAbnb^joi.'
Politics
Everything happening around us has something to do with politics. In consideration of this, it is essential to set up different age-levels of curriculum in political education during the course of compulsory education. Likewise in life-long education, it is important to provide adults with some opportunities to learn the rules of democracy, for it is not desirable in an educational setting that democratic rights might recede for the next generation to come. It will be difficult to achieve equality between women and men as long as politicians and bureaucrats without gender sensitivity perspectives occupy influential positions.
Mohammad Rajja
Member, Nepal student society Dhaka
Card phone booth The unused card phone booth was set up in the Gopalganj head post office building a decade ago for public. But the government's TNT depart merit decided to stop this service in 1999 for unknown reasons. There were nine card phone booths in different places of Gopalganj. But all of them have been closed!
Who will look Into the matter?
Mahmud All Kabir
Ex-BSS Correspondent Gopalganj
To the prime minister...
Chittagong Is the business city of Bangladesh and it has been contributing a lot to develop the country's economy. We the people of Chittagong expected that the Third Karnafuli Bridge would be open very soon after finishing its construction and it is also expected by project director (PD) of the bridge. He told BSS that the 950 metre long and 24.40 metre wide bridge is expected to be complete before the scheduled time --September 2009.
Although the physical construction of the Third Karnafuli Bridge has so far been completed but its openingdate is being delayed.
1 am earnestly requesting the honourable prime minister on behalf of the Chittagong people, to take proper steps to open The Third Karnafuli Bridge as early as possible.
Mohammed Jamal Uddin Dept, of English International Islamic University Ctg.
Immigrant women workers
A joint research report of UNDP & a private organisation portrays that the women workers abroad find themselves in a very miserable and pathetic condition. According to that research report, approximately 1,00000 immigrant female workers are working in foreign countries mostly in the Middle East to support their families. They work, as, , domestic helper. But it is an issue of great concern that most of them, to be exact 85% of domestic workers, are the victims of physical torture & oppression by their employers. Moreover, 20% of them are being harassed sexually. As they are unaware of the labour law they are being tormented by the employers. They do not get any legal protection there. Therefore, they are compelled to bear with the oppression. Apart from this, the recruiting agency or the brokers through whom they go abroad as 'domestic helper’ are not sending them under any written contract.
According to the researcher of that report, only Bangladesh embassy can save them from such oppression. They even do not know the address of Bangladesh embassy building. It is the responsibility of the govern-
ment to look into the matter seriously.
Mohammad Zia-UI-Haquc Eng. Department International Islamic University Ctg.
Eid day
I saw some foreigners roaming In the city and taking snaps on Eid day. An old mosque know as Tira Masjid caught their interest and they were very exuberant, enjoying themselves with the unique work of architecture with colourful small pieces of glass. Really, the mosque is an example of quality architecture.
The only thing that they complained about was unhygienic and dirty rbads.
Md Mahbubur Rahman Old town resident
Thanks, Mr. Galloway!
The Daily Star reports that George Galloway, a member of British parliament, on Wednesday demanded international enquiry into the proposed Tipairnukh dam by India. As we live In Sylhet, we can guess the problems that the dam will cause. He has noted in his speech, "If the dam is built Bangladesh, particularly, its Sylhet area will be seriously damaged and this project should be halted," We are thankful to him for such a realistic comment.
One thing was really surprising, grounds of his speaking on this issue. According to the report," as a Member of British Parliament he represents 40,000 people of Sylhet in London and he is duty bound to look into welfare of these people, who will be victimised by the proposed Tipairnukh dam.” If we believe in his statement, simply, the question arises, what should be the role of our government in this case? He represents only 40,000 people, but our government?
It disappoints us when we perceive that our representatives speak spontaneously for saving others' interest, not ours! This is the difference between British MPs and ours. Md.^dufHamiif
Assistant Professor, Dept, of Business Administration Shahjalal University, Sylhet
DST scheme
"Emon deshti kothao khunjey paabey nako tumi", so sang D.L. Roy a long time back How right he was! There is no country like ours in so many ways. But I shall only talk about one. There is no country in the world which is in love with Daylight Saving Tune (DST) like ours. It was love at first sight. Our elected government and its eminent advisers totally forgot why they went for DST, in the first place. We were told it was to save energy.
How much energy they saved, only they know. It was summer then. In case they haven't noticed, it is winter now. The days have become much shorter and cooler. Nobody is using air coolers
and fans in the country anymore.
Lot of energy has already been saved. So why punish the children for no fault of theirs? Moreover, it is really confusing to find we are one and a half hour ahead of India instead of only half an hour. On the other hand, we are at par with Thailand. Surely that is not the best way to be like the Thais!
Shahjahan Hafiz Gulshan, Dhaka
Rivers in Sylhet
The partition of British India took place in 1947 on the understanding between The Indian Congress and The Muslim League that the province of Punjab and Bengal would be bifurcated based on the religion based concentration of the people.
The then district of Sylhet of the then Assam province was an exception as a referendum was to be held to determine the option of the people. The referendum gave the verdict to join Pakistan. The referendum was based on one simple option "either/ or" and there was no way to get the verdict to find any other option. But curiously the Chief of Boundary Commission, Mr. Redcliff, unilaterally .apparently with permission from the Governor General, dissected the then biggest subdivision Karimganj mentioning the river Kushiyara and gave away the biggest portion of the Karimgonj subdivision
and a small area now Zokiganj upazila was left for the then Sylhet district to be a part of East Pakistan . Late Mr. Hamidul Haque Choudhury was in charge of looking after this matter but nothing could be done against the influence exerted by the Congress.
I was a student of class-VIII of the Karimgonj Govt High School and had to cross the border and get admitted in a hurriedly erected high school and a hostel at Zakigonj with bamboo and tin structure which enabled me and others to appear in Matriculation Exams in 1949.
My village home is at Ballah on the bank of river Surma?I had seen our family elephants crossing river Surma from north into our village at a river point just west of old Kaliganj Bazar with a few inches dry at their back This means the water in winter was at least 7 to 8 feet deep. Recently, people in our villages have seen Indian border guards crossing that point on foot with the water hardly two feet deep. Our govt officials or the media people may visit the places during winter to see and take photographs of the siltation that has taken place in the upper side (east) and lower side (west) of the river to present a report to Indian authorities to share the costs of dredging in future and also to stop encroachments. Moreover, it has been reported by our people in the villages that India has constructed small dams and other obsta-
cles in the tributaries of the Surma and this may be another reason for less water coming down into our areas. Altaf Ahmed Choudhury B. com., LL.B.
Gulshan-2. Dhaka
Three lane traffic
I have failed to understand how the three lane traffic movement will work if vehicles are categorised like private cars will ply on first lane, buses on middle lane and CNG taxis on third lane.
What I have seen in developed countries is that drivers who intend to take left turn from a main road should‘SttV" on left lane, those intending to go straight should stay on middle lane and those intend to take right turn should stay on right lane. Buses that have authorised stoppages on left will definitely have to stay on left lane. No one is allowed to change lanes on busy roads and are liable to be penalised.
The three lane traffic sys-tem which Dhaka Metropolitan Police has introduced is bound to cause jams at auto traffic signal crossings when on a green signal a vehicle on right lane tries to take a left turn or tries to take right turn from left lane. 1 am very sceptical about the three-lane traffic system that the DMP has introduced but still I hope through trial and error traffic discipline will come into force on our roads and highways.
Ziauddin Ahmed
Gulshan -1, Dhaka