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Stock Prices Continue To Slide

Investors begin fast-unto-death

Sarwar A Chowdhury and Gazi Towhid Ahmed
Angry investors began a fast-unto-death programme before the country's premier bourse yesterday to protest a continuous fall in share prices.
The demonstration started at 11:00am and continued to expand in the evening
with many more investors from across the city gathering in the Motijheel business hub to join the protesters.
Some political leaders made it a point to express their solidarity with the investors.
The protest intensified at noon as stocks suffered a massive fall, with the benchmark
general index of Dhaka Stock Exchange plummeting by 181.31 pointsor3.26 percent.
Meanwhile, Finance Minister AMA Muhith had an emergency meeting with the Securities and Exchange Commission in the evening to devise ways of stabilising the market.
The government will come up with some positive measures today to restore the investors' dampened confidence in the shares market, a senior SEC official said after the meeting.
However, the protests and hunger strike, under the banner of Bangladesh Capital Market Investors Unity, were going on till filing of this report at 1:00am today.
BNP, JP LEADERS' SOLIDARITY
Leaders of different political parties, including the BNP and Jatiya Party, have expressed solidarity with the small investors who went on a hunger strike in front of the Dhaka Stock Exchange to protest the free fall in share prices.
Senior leaders of the parties also requested the protesters to break their fast and
postpone the demonstration. They assured them that they would go to the highest authority of the government with their demand.
"Please break your fast. I assure you that I will be informing the prime minister about your miseries," Jatiya Party Chairman HM Ershad told the protesters.
He came to the protest venue around 2:00pm as a group of investors, seated on the road and covering their heads with pieces of white cloth, were taking part in the hungerstrike..
“Petty investors are going broke due to the massive fall in the stock market. It is not desirable," Ershad said, adding that everyone knew who were involved in market manipulation and they must be brought to book
He also urged the government to withdraw the cases filed at different times against the small investors.
Expressing solidarity with the agitating investors, BNP standing committee member Abdul Moyeen Khan told them that his party was beside them. If the BNP came to power, he said, it would compensate the affected inves-
tors.
“We warned the government earlier. But it identified the investors as 'fatkabaz' {speculators], instead of showing them respect," Moyeen told the protesters.
Sajjad Zahir Chandan, a leader of Communist Party of Bangladesh, Abdul Malek Ratan, general secretary of Jatiya SamajtantrikDal (Rob), and Shahadat Hossain Selim, senior joint secretary general of LDR also announced their parties' solidarity with the aggrieved investors.