Rab to get 2 copters

The government is going to purchase two choppers at a cost of Tk 90 crore to equip Rapid Action Battalion better for carrying out anti-crime operations through the air.

A proposal to procure the aircraft, first of its kind for Rab, is likely to be placed in a meeting of the cabinet committee on government purchase today, said sources in the home ministry.

Besides, the housing and public works ministry will table another proposal to construct more than 500 flats in the capital and its adjoining areas.

Bell Helicopter Asia (Pte) Ltd will supply the copters to be purchased from the US.

According to the home ministry proposal, parts of the helicopters will be brought from the US to Singapore. The choppers will be assembled there and later flown to Bangladesh.

The government has allocated Tk 60 crore in the current fiscal year's budget for this purpose.

With the inclusion of choppers to its logistics, the elite force will be able to reach crime scenes quicker, noted a home ministry official.

The Air Force will be in charge of operation, maintenance and safety of the choppers, added the official.

The purchase committee meeting will also consider a scheme for building 360 flats, each measuring 1336 square feet, for government officials in the capital's Mirpur area, stated sources in housing and public works ministry.

The ministry will also propose to construct three buildings, each having 15 storeys, in Dohar upazila of Dhaka for the middle class people. The three units will have 168 flats with a floor area of 1298 square feet each.

Source: The Daily Star (May 22, 2011)

Adviser Imam asks Khaleda to apologise

Prime Minister's Adviser HT Imam yesterday blasted opposition leader Khaleda Zia for her remark that Awami League assumed power through a secret understanding with the last caretaker regime.

"She [Khaleda] will have to apologise to the people if she fails to prove her claim," he told a press conference at the AL president's political office in the capital's Dhanmondi.

BNP chairperson in a recent meeting in London had alleged that the decision of bringing AL to power was taken at a secret meeting among the chief adviser of the last caretaker government Fakhruddin Ahmed, the then army chief Moeen U Ahmed and Imam in Cox's Bazar, days before the 2008 polls, said the former bureaucrat.

Terming Khaleda's comment baseless, imaginary and ill-motivated, Imam insisted he had not been to Cox's Bazar in 2008, never even in five years before that.

He also complained the BNP chief is making such statements from the pain of being defeated in the last parliamentary elections.

The administrative affairs adviser categorically rejected BNP's demand for holding mid-term polls.

Imam urged Khaleda to join the parliament session and help a parliamentary body amend the constitution.

AL leaders Mahbubul Alam Hanif, Nuh-ul-Alam Lenin and Mrinal Kanti Das were present at the press conference.

Source: The Daily Star (May 22, 2011)

Online GD fails to make a mark

The government move to digitalise policing initially with online general diary has failed to make an impression as most people are unaware of it even a year after its launch.

Most people, who have recently visited police stations to file GDs for snatching, lost documents or other reasons, were found scratching their heads when asked why they did not go for online GDs.

In most cases it turned out that they have never heard of it.

"I visit the police station almost every month to report of stolen goods from my garage," said Ahammad Hossain at Tejgaon police station.

"But no-one at the station informed me that I could file GDs from anywhere," said the owner of a garage in Karwan Bazar.

As many as 2,082 GDs were filed electronically since the online system was introduced in March last year.

On the other hand, 38 police stations in the city received 32,721 handwritten GDs in April alone -- 15 times the number of online GDs recorded so far.

Police say the online general diary system, launched as an e-governance initiative, was intended to make it easier for citizens to file GDs. It meant no longer going to the police station to file a GD for "non-emergency" matters.

Instead, the system has remained merely as a window dressing, according to citizens and experts, who say the police have put little effort to make it attractive and useful.

"It seems the service exists only in name," said Mustafa Jabbar, president of Bangladesh Computer Samity, a national coalition of IT-based organisations. "It is just there without helping anyone, neither people nor the police."

A GD is usually filed for legal or security matters that do not warrant police cases.

Dhaka police stations receive over 35 handwritten GDs a day, compared to some five GDs or so that are filed electronically every month, insiders say.

The statistics came as little surprise to Anirban Ghosh, a Khilgaon resident.

The software engineer tried to file an online GD for his lost office identity card in December.

After losing his ID card, Anirban went home, fired up his computer and logged into the police website to file the GD, which involved filling out an elaborate form with required information.

Everything went well. He received an identification number for collecting a copy of the GD from the police station concerned.

Ten days later he received a call from his local police station.

"They said I did not provide enough information, so I need to visit the station and give a handwritten application instead," said Anirban.

"So here I am to file a GD that could have been taken care of ten days ago had I come here in the first place," he said, adding, "The website is a total waste of time."

Police officers admit the new system is unattractive, clunky and a flop among the citizens.

Speaking on anonymously, a top home ministry official blamed lack of promotion and the slow online process, which ironically is more time consuming than the handwritten process.

It takes days for the electronic diaries to get sorted and sent to the respective police stations, from where the complainants can collect their copies of GD, police sources inform.

"Conversely, you can file your GD and get a copy in five minutes if you go to a police station," commented a duty officer at Dhanmondi Police Station who refused to be named.

Police officers say the website is not user-friendly and does a poor job of instructing the citizens on how to fill out the diary properly. It creates problems for both the police and the complainants.

In October, Tejgaon police received a GD where the description of the incident read: "Dear Sir, Please save me".

The complainant, an alleged stalking victim named Shifa, mentioned the name of the stalker. But she did not provide any contact details or any other information.

The lack of user-friendliness in the website reflects poor efforts and planning from the police, experts observe.

They questioned the police administration's sincerity towards going digital and added that much of the corruption in police would go away with digitalisation.

This could be a reason for the lack of interest in implementing many of their digitalisation initiatives, said a retired police official requesting anonymity.

Home Minister Sahara Khatun during inauguration of the online GD system dubbed it as a part of fulfilling the government's electoral pledge of a "Digital Bangladesh".

If the online general diary system is a reflection of the government fulfilling its dream of "Digital Bangladesh", the country has big things to worry about, Dhaka residents observe.

Source: The Daily Star (May 22, 2011)

Mob kill 2 robbers

A mob beat two suspected robbers to death in Companyganj upazila of Noakhali Friday night.

They also vandalised a microbus used by the robbers.

On information, police rushed to the spot at about 10:30pm and arrested driver of the microbus Ilias and helper Rabbi.

Police said locals on information stopped a microbus carrying a gang of robbers around 9:00pm when the bandits were going to Bazar area of Musapur union from Chardiarar Balua.

They could catch two of the robbers while the others managed to flee. The mob beat the two up leaving them dead on the spot.

One of the deceased was identified as Jashim Uddin while the identity of another could not be known immediately.

Jashim hails from Gochchhagram and is an accused in a number of robbery cases, said Officer-in-Charge Monjurul Haque of Companyganj Police Station.

The bodies were sent to Noakhali General Hospital morgue for autopsy.

Source: The Daily Star (May 22, 2011)

Govt delays procurement for farmers' benefit

The government is taking time to go for procurement of Boro rice to build a public stock as it considers market price of rice is still high, and public purchase of it for providing price incentives to farmers is not needed at this stage.

In the previous years, procurement of Boro rice for government stock used to start in mid or late April.

But this year the food ministry has not yet announced a procurement policy while Boro harvest is already more than halfway through, and will be over by the first week of next month.

Some experts support the government strategy, but others oppose it saying small and marginal farmers, who are forced to sell their produce during peak season to repay their loans for Boro cultivation, will face losses or make marginal gains that will discourage them to grow rice.

"Rice price is still high, though it started declining. Paddy price is not yet at a level that farmers will face losses. If we see farmers are really deprived of fair prices, we shall surely procure rice," said Agriculture Minister Matia Chowdhury.

Coarse rice prices in the capital's markets now range from Tk 30 to 34 a kg, that of medium quality rice from Tk 35 to 40 and of fine rice from Tk 41 to 50. The prices have fallen 6-7 percent in the last one month, but still these are 14-20 percent higher than during the corresponding period last year.

Food ministry officials said prices of coarse rice in the rural markets are also not less than Tk 28 a kg. Paddy prices are between Tk 525 and Tk 750 a maund depending on varieties compared to Tk 750-1100 in March, according to farmers and rice millers.

Matia Chowdhury, who is also on the Food Policy Monitoring Committee, said, "Throughout last year, farmers made good gains. At the present prices too, they are making gains."

The Department of Agriculture Extension (DAE) assessed production cost of milled boro rice this year is Tk 24-25 a kg, she mentioned.

The agriculture minister said that fixing rice procurement price at Tk 27-28 will be fine, but market price of coarse rice is still higher than this. A prime goal of public food procurement is price support for farmers, but as the price is still high, the government is waiting for it to decline, she added.

Ahmad Hossain Khan, director general of food directorate, said, "Rice price could go up if we start procurement immediately."

Prices would come down further when harvest is over 80 percent, mainly in the major Boro producing districts in the northern region of the country.

Dr Quazi Shahabuddin, former director general of Bangladesh Institute of Development Studies, supported the government strategy, but suggested that it must keep a watch on food prices both in the domestic and global markets.

"If prices in the international market are lower than those in the domestic market, the government will surely go for import."

Former food secretary Abdul Latif Mondal however said the government has to go for rice procurement immediately to ensure interests of small and marginal farmers, if not of the big farmers.

"Small farmers sell paddy immediately after the harvest to pay the loans they take for cultivation. Low prices of paddy means losses for them," he said. "If these farmers make more gains, they will grow more, which is crucial to food security."

Mondal warned that rice traders, who take large amounts of bank loans, are controlling the rice market now, and will continue to do so if the government further delays rice procurement.

Referring to last Boro season, he said the government managed to buy less than six lakh tonnes of rice while the target was 12 lakh tonnes. Later, under pressure from rice millers, it had to increase procurement price to Tk 28 a kg from Tk 25.

"We must take lessons from the past. Higher prices should go to the farmers, not to the rice millers," he said.

Source: The Daily Star (May 22, 2011)

ADP implementation picks up in latter half

In keeping with tradition, the implementation of Annual Development Programme became faster in the later months of the fiscal year compared to the first half.

Hurried spending wastes government money and makes room for corruption, Research Director of Bangladesh Institute of Development Studies (BIDS) Zaid Bakht said.

In the first 10 months of the current fiscal year, ADP implementation was Tk 20,909 crore or 60 percent of the revised allocation, which means average monthly expenditure was about Tk 2,090 crore.

However, in the first month ADP implementation was Tk 836 crore or two percent of the allocation. In the first quarter, the average monthly expenditure was Tk 1,119 crore.

The government has already slashed the current fiscal year's ADP by more than Tk 3,000 crore to make it Tk 35,130 crore.

As per the revised plan, in the last two months of the current fiscal year the government will spend Tk 7,110 crore every month.

As the fiscal year is drawing nearer to an end, the expenditure is getting faster and with it government's bank borrowing is increasing. In the first six months of the current fiscal year the government's bank borrowing was very small. After 10 months the government has borrowed Tk 11,380 crore from the banking system.

In this year's budget, the government set a target to borrow around Tk 15,000 crore but it may exceed this target.

A Bangladesh Bank official said if the government borrows steadily every month as per its target it does not have any negative impact but if it borrows a huge amount in a small period, it destabilises the money market.

A high official of the planning ministry said after presenting the national budget every year the finance minister in the post-budget press conference urges secretaries to start implementing the ADP from the beginning of the financial year.

The ministries are told to make the purchasing plan ahead of the start of the fiscal year. But the situation does not change, planning ministry officials said. Most of the projects of the ADP are on-going.

According to planning ministry information, in the last fiscal year the total ADP utilisation was Tk 25,917 crore. In the last two months the expenditure was Tk 9,216 crore. In the last month the expenditure was Tk 6,395 crore.

Planning ministry officials said on many occasions the ministries do not actually spend the money rather show it spent. They show expenditures against different departments and divisions of various ministries. As a result, in the last month a high expenditure is shown.

Even on the last working day of the fiscal year, Tk 2,000 crore to Tk 3,000 crore was released from the government account in Bangladesh Bank.

Zaid Bakht said spending 40 percent of the allocations in 2 months would not only waste public money but also have detrimental effect on the quality of the completed projects.

Zaid Bakht was a member of the public expenditure review commission. Drawing from experience, he said there were instances where cheques were issued to show that the money was spent but in fact it was not and no work had been done.

The government takes up challenging ADPs with a large number of projects but the ministries concerned do not have the capability or the efficiency to implement them, which creates these problems.

A planning ministry official said hurried expenditure at the end of the year results in the government's original plan for ADP failing its goal. Even though ministries fail to implement the ADP fully at the end of the year, they make demand for more allocation.

Implementation Monitoring and Evaluation Department (IMED) in its report prepared in March mentioned several problems in ADP implemention.

The ministries take up more projects than the resources allocated to them under the medium-term budgetary framework. As the number of projects increases, both the tenure and expenditure go up.

In the current fiscal year, the number of total projects was 916, in the revised ADP allocation was cut by more than Tk 3,000 crore but the number of projects increased to 1,185. The planning ministry official said this is a yearly phenomenon.

According to the IMED report, the projects the government takes every year cannot be completed for the lack of necessary resources. In the current fiscal year, 287 projects were scheduled for completion but in the revised budget the number was reduced.

Project implementation is delayed due to various reasons including change in the project design, inefficiency and failure to release funds.

Source: The Daily Star (May 22, 2011)

Disquieting developments in CHT

THE killing of four members of the United People's Democratic Front, including one of its central leaders, in a gun attack in Rangamati on Saturday, highlights, yet again, the fact that natural peace in the Chittagong Hill Tracts, which had been ravaged by 22 years of guerrilla warfare until the signing of the CHT Treaty on December 2, 1997 between the previous Awami League and Parbatya Chattagram Jana Sanghati Samiti, the political umbrella of the now-defunct Shanti Bahini, remains a remote reality. According to a report front-paged in New Age on Sunday, the UPDF accused the PCJSS of orchestrating the killing—an accusation denied outright by the latter—and called a daylong blockade of road and waterway in Rangamati for Monday in protest against the killing and in demand for the arrest and trial of the killers and the resignation of the PCJSS chief, Jyotirindra Bodhipriya Larma, widely known as Santu Larma from the position of the CHT Regional Council chairman. The accusation of the PCJSS's involvement in the killing and the demand for Santu Larma's resignation by the UPDF appear hardly surprising, though; after all, the latter, formed by a dissident group of students, women activists and PCJSS leader in the wake of the signing of the CHT Treaty, has consistently condemned the PCJSS for signing what it calls a 'document of surrender'.

As we have argued in these columns many times in the past, foot-dragging by successive governments, including the incumbent Awami League-Jatiya Party administration, insofar as implementation of the treaty is concerned, may have seriously undermined the peace dividend that it promises and, instead, stretched the patience of the hill people to a point that they have started suspecting the intention of the ruling quarters, irrespective of their partisan affiliation. In fact, last year, Santu Larma said in public that the so-called 'sincere assurances' of successive governments had been nothing but 'rhetoric'. His claim, regrettably, may have been substantiated by even the incumbent government's failure to make any significant progress in the implementation of the treaty. Needless to add, the expectation from the AL-led government as regards implementation of the treaty may have been especially because not only was the treaty signed during the Awami League's previous tenure in government but the party also promised in its election manifesto to completely implement the treaty.

Indeed, there are provisions in the treaty, e.g. voter registration and eligibility criteria, which are not only legally tenuous but also in contravention with the constitution of the republic. However, none of the successive governments seems to have made any sincere effort to address the legal and constitutional anomalies in the treaty. Moreover, they have hardly made any effort to implement those provisions in the treaty—e.g. settlement of land disputes—that are unlikely to stir any legal or constitutional controversy.

Meanwhile, according to a report also front-paged in New Age on Sunday, quoting the home secretary, the government is 'seriously considering' imposition of a ban on the UPDF, which it seems to think is responsible for the recent instability in the hill tracts. If the government goes ahead with the plan, it might compound the problem, especially because Santu Larma has been clamouring for a ban on the UPDF, which, he says, is a 'terrorist organisation'. The government needs to recognise the fact that the prevailing tension in the hill tracts boils down to the failure of successive governments to effectively address the implementation of the CHT treaty. It needs to also realise that the problem is essentially political and thus the solution needs to be political through peaceful negotiations. Hence, it needs to initiate talks immediately with the parties concerned and strive towards a settlement that promises win-win for everyone. If it allows the tension in the CHT to simmer on, it may some day snowball into a crisis. If it so happens, the consequence could be ultimately detrimental to the interest of the country.

Source: New Age

Spirit of ’71 highlighted in art show

The spirit of the war of independence in 1971 and contribution of the founding president of Bangladesh Sheikh Mujibur Rahman have been highlighted in an ongoing group art show at the Gallery Jolrong in Banani.

The 20-day art exhibition titled Muktijuddho o Bangabandhu features the works of 60 artists including senior artists like Shahabuddin Ahmed and Hamiduzzan Khan along with promising artists.

Both the war and Sheikh Mujibur Rahman are presented in the displayed works at the exhibition. For example, a painting by artist Abdus Shakoor Shah portrays some mysterious looking faces. The faces stand for those millions of people, who were brutally killed during the genocide committed by the Pakistani army. Another work by Amirul Momenin Chowdhury, titled Bangladesh- 1971, shows the misery of a helpless woman who was captivated and raped by the Pakistani force during the war. Yet the title is suggestive of the ground realities that existed in Bangladesh, 1971.

Another work on display shows Sheikh Mujibur Rahman standing tall as the leader of the masses. A painting by Zakia Khan Chandana portrays Sheikh Mujibur Rahman is fighting from his grave to re-establish the rights of the people of Bangladesh.

The exhibition was inaugurated by minister of foreign affairs Dr Dipu Moni on May 19. 

The exhibition will continue till 10 June.

Source: New Age

Nat’l Museum pays tributes to Tagore

Bangladesh National Museum organised a programme on Saturday at the Sufia Kamal Memorial Auditorium of the museum to mark the sesquicentennial birth anniversary of Nobel Laureate poet Rabindranath Tagore.

The programme featured poem recitation, film screening and a discussion session.

Recitation group Kanthashilan presented Tagore's popular lyrical drama Gandharir Abedan (Gandhari's Plea) in the evening.

The story of the lyrical drama revolves around the historic Kurukshetra War and the conflict between truth and relationships. The central character Gandhari, the Kaurava's mother, raises her voice against the injustice that has done to her sons.

Recitation artiste Golam Sarwar directed the production.

Zahirul Haque Khan, Ela Rahman and Enayet Kazal, Razia Sultana Mita and Omar Faruque Emon played the lead roles in the production. 

The production was followed by a film screening session in which renowned scientist and photographer Nowazesh Ahmed's film Chhinnapatra, based on Tagore's poem of the same title, was screened.

Earlier, a discussion session was held at the same venue. Eminent educationist Mustafa Nurul Islam was present as the chief guest, Bangladesh National Museum trustee board chairman M Azizur Rahman and museum director general Prakash Chandra Das addressed the session. Begum Akhtar Kamal, professor of Bangla Department of Dhaka University, presented key-note paper titled 'Rabindranath Tagore's Concept on Culture' at the session.

Source: New Age