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Bangladesh is well on course to achieving gender parity in primary education enrolment by 2005, a target set by the United Nations as part of the Millennium Development Goals.
   In the ‘Progress of Children’ report launched Monday in Geneva, it was noted that Bangladesh is among the 125 out of 180 countries that are on course to meet the target.
   Six of the eight countries in South Asia have been specially targeted by UNICEF as part of its ‘25 by 2005’ Initiative, aimed at accelerating progress on gender parity.
   Of these, Bangladesh has been the most successful in increasing the participation of girls in primary school and, according to the report, is on target to meet gender parity by 2005, along with Maldives and Sri Lanka.
   The report, launched by UNICEF’s executive director Carol Bellamy, also highlighted that millions of girls in South Asia, Middle East, North Africa and West/Central Africa are still denied a basic education, impacting heavily on their health and survival.
   The report, however, also categorised Bangladesh in the list of countries where total primary net enrolment/attendance ratio is below 85 per cent. The secondary net attendance ratio is 60.9 for boys and 59.1 for girls.
   ‘Bangladesh has done well on gender parity in primary school enrolment, but there is still much to be done in the later years of schooling,’ said Morten Giersing, the UNICEF representative in Bangladesh.
   Gender parity is a prerequisite to achieve universal primary education by 2015, which is unlikely to be met without a ‘quantum leap’, the report said.
   Detailing wide differences between regions and between and within countries, the report singled out poverty as the fundamental barrier to increasing access to education, while a mother’s educational status also determines a child’s chances of going to school. Value of girl child in the society is also a barrier to continue education beyond primary level.
   The report complements the work of the United Nations Girls’ Education Initiative and the Gender Achievement and Prospects in Education project, both supported by UN agencies, governments, donor countries, non-governmental organisations, civil society, the private sector and communities and families.

The Ahmadiya Muslim Jamaat has urged the government to ensure their constitutional and human rights.
   Briefing newsmen in its head office at Bakshibazar in Dhaka on Tuesday, Ahmadiya leaders demanded that the government should take stern action against the ‘fanatics,’ who have been engaged in attacking their mosques and people in the name of International Khatme Nabuwat across the country.
   The leaders said more than 10,000 ‘fanatics,’ carrying sticks, attacked their Jatindranagar mosque at Shyamnagar in Satkhira on April 17 and on their direction, on-duty policemen attached a signboard to the mosque.
   As members of the sect removed the signboard, the police continued pressuring them to hang it again, they said.
   In the presence of the police, Bangladesh Rifles, Armed Police Battalion and magistrate, the fanatics also attacked the sect members in the village and injured 10 people, including women and children, they said.
   Two of the injured were taken to hospital in Dhaka, but the law enforcers did not take any action against the attackers, they alleged.
   ‘The constitution has guaranteed all the citizens their rights to exercise their religion and set up their respective religious institutions within the territory and no one can interfere with the rights,’ said Justice KM Sobhan, who attended the briefing as a member of civil society.
   ‘The Qur’an and the hadiths also do not allow anyone to declare any person non-Muslim,’ the retired justice said and cited the example of Justice Munir commission, constituted after a riot on the same issue in the
   erstwhile Pakistan in 1953, which declared the movement ‘illegal.’
   Journalist Shahriyar Kabir also attended the briefing. He said the International Khatme Nabuwat is an association of Jamaat-e-Islami and it has been trying to enforce its activities as it did in Pakistan, where the government declared the Ahmadiyas ‘non-muslim.’
   ‘Now Jamaat-e-Islami is part of the government and it is implementing its plans through International Khatme Nabuwat as part of its blueprint to make the country a Pakistan,’ he said.

Petrol and octane-run government and semi-government vehicles will get fuel cost only for CNG by September if those are not converted to CNG-run vehicles.
   The finance minister, M Saifur Rahman, gave the warning on Tuesday after a meeting with the state minister for energy and mineral resources, AKM Mosharraf Hossain, at the finance ministry.
   Saifur also expressed dissatisfaction over non-conversion of most of the vehicles to CNG-run ones despite expiry of several deadlines.
   He said the government wants to cut the fuel cost and by September all the petrol and octane-driven vehicles of the government and autonomous bodies should be converted into CNG-run.
   A CNG-run vehicle can save 70 per cent fuel spending.
   Saifur made the directive after taking a stock of the government’s losses in fuel oil sector from the state minister.
   The High Court ordered the government in 2001 to convert all government vehicles into CNG-run ones for the sake of protecting environment.
   Meanwhile, the government filed a petition again for extension of time as the last deadline for such conversion expired in the first week of April.
   The HC extended the deadline for several times as the government sought more time.

The Awami League president, Sheikh Hasina, on Tuesday alleged that the price-hike of agriculture inputs and lack of farm subsidy had pushed the country’s farmer community into a misery.
   ‘The government threw the country’s agriculture sector into a severe crisis by raising the prices of agro-inputs and denying the sector of subsidy,’ said Hasina when a delegation of the party’s peasants’ wing, Bangladesh Krishak League, came to meet her marking the wing’s 33rd founding anniversary.
   She alleged that people in the government are themselves involved in such price manipulations and grabbing of subsidy.
   ‘People of Hawa Bhaban and the BNP are misappropriating money of the subsidy,’ she said.
   Terming Bangladesh an agro-based country, Sheikh Hasina said if the farmers of the country once again voted her party to power, they would resolve all the crises persisting in the sector and revive the lost glory of the farmers of Bangladesh.
   She asked her party men to build up resistance against the ‘autocratic’ government and wage a united movement for implementation of the demands of the farmers.
   The opposition party chief suggested that the AL front organisation leaders should prepare plans in advance now to face the crisis in the agriculture sector.
   Krishak League president Dr Mirza Abdul Jalil, general secretary Motahar Hossain Molla, advocate Rahmat Ali MP, Rashed Mosharraf, Dr Abdur Razzak MP, Harun-Or-Rashid Hawlader, and MA Karim were present during the meeting, among others.
   Earlier in the morning, the Krishak League leaders and activists, as part of the founding anniversary programme, placed wreaths at the portrait of Sheikh Mujibur Rahman at the Bangabandhu Bhaban.

Another suspected criminal was killed allegedly in a shootout between his associates and the police at Bhasantek in the capital early Tuesday, raising the death toll in crossfire to 268 since June, 2004.
   The police said they arrested Pichchi Jahangir, a listed criminal of the Kafrul police station, with the help of local people when he, along with his associates, went to the under-construction building of one Kazi Golam Ahmed on the Ibrahimpur Ananda Road at about 1:30pm Monday. The police also recovered a pistol from his possession.
   The gang shot at the guard, Kabiruddin, as the owner had refused to pay them Tk 2 lakh, the police said.
   During interrogation, Jahangir reportedly stated to the police that his gang members would assemble on the bank of Bhasantek Dewanpara jheel at about 12:30am Tuesday.
   The police took him to the spot, but his associates opened fire on the policemen, leaving a constable, Moshiur Rahman, wounded, the police said. The police also fired back.
   Jahangir tried to get off but was wounded critically in the ‘crossfire’, the police said, adding that his associates managed to escape jumping into the jheel.
   The police recovered a revolver along with five bullets from the spot.
   Jahangir and the injured constable were taken to Dhaka Medical College Hospital, where the on-duty doctors declared Jahangir dead.

The bail hearing of the professor of Rajshahi University’s Arabic department, Asadullah Al Ghalib was postponed as he was not produced before the court on Tuesday.
   The sources said Ghalib was the chief accused of the bomb attack in a folk theatre programme at Takia Bazar in Palashbari and at Mahimaganj BRAC office in Gobindaganj upazila.
   The next date of hearing of the bail petition was fixed for April 30.

The organising secretary of Bikalpadhara Bangladesh and son of former president, AQM Badruddoza Chowdhury, Mahi B Chowdhury was alleged of grabbing land and rioting.
   An eye specialist of Islamiya Eye Hospital, Rafiqur Rahman Khan, on Tuesday at a press conference in Dhaka alleged that Mahi along with his armed activists grabbed his 12 kathas of land in Shyamoli.
   He said while he went abroad for higher studies, Mahi destroyed the makeshift room of the caretaker and beat him up before grabbing the land.
   Later, Mahi’s mother-in-law claiming the land filed a case, but the court after hearing both the sides, issued a permanent injunction on his mother-in-law, asking her not to go the land, said Rafiqur. Rafiqur alleged that he was getting regular death threats from Mahi for withdrawing the case that he filed against them and pleaded security for him and his family members.
   Despite repeated attempts, Mahi could not be contacted.

About 250 families of the Ahmadiya community are living amid insecurity after attacks on seven of their houses on Tuesday and in the wake of an eviction ultimatum from the rival Khatme Nabuwat religious group.
   Sources said a group of agitated Khatme Nabuwat activists on Tuesday ransacked and looted seven Ahmadiya houses at Jatindranagar of Shyamnagar upazila and gave the area’s about 250 Ahmadiya families a 5-day ultimatum to leave their homes.
   Three members of the community were also injured in an attack near Chhoto Bhetkhali canal, they said.
   The attackers also looted goods worth Tk 1.50 lakh from a shop belonging to an Ahmadiya at Bhetkhali Bazar Monday night, the community members claimed.
   Official sources said additional policemen were sent Tuesday to possible troubled areas to avert any fresh
   violence.

Sajib Wazed Joy, son of Awami League president Sheikh Hasina, on Tuesday called for an educated and meritorious new leadership to develop Bangladesh as a modern and powerful nation.
   ‘The country is now passing through a critical moment. The wave of terrorism has gone beyond control making it hard for the people to carry out normal works and businesses.’
   Joy made the remarks while exchanging views with leaders of the Bangladesh Chhatra League at AL’s Dhanmondi office.

Thirty couples, too insolvent to bear wedding expenses, were given in marriage in a ceremony at the Spectra Convention Centre at Gulshan in Dhaka on Tuesday without exchanging any dowry.
   The Masjid Council for Community Development selected the couples and organised the mass wedding as part of its campaign to create awareness of dowry among the people.
   The couples were from poor villages in Jamalpur, Mymensingh, Manikganj, Kishoreganj, Comilla, Shariatpur, Madaripur, and Faridpur.
   ‘I never thought I could marry this way. I am very happy and I will remain committed to my wife for ever,’ said Sumon Khan, one of the 30 grooms.
   The people who regularly say their juma prayers at the Banani Jam-e-Masjid, and Spectra paid for the wedding expenses.
   Each of the couples received wedding suits, ornaments, and other necessities, and Tk 15,000 in cash. Muhrana for each of the couples was fixed at Tk 10,000. The council will provide further grants to the couples.
   The council chairman, Maulana Abul Kalam Azad, said the council will monitor all the couples for two months.
   ‘After two months, we will give them a cow and a sewing machine so they can earn on their own,’ he said.
   The state minister for home affairs, Lutfozzaman Babar, state minister for education ANM Ehsanul Hoque Milan, Dowry Prevention Foundation chairman Iqbal Hasan and Spectra Group chairman Khan Mohammad Aftabuddin were present.
   The council made an open invitation to the mass wedding session. Seventy-five couples applied for the group marriage and the organisers selected 30 of them.

The government Tuesday filed a petition before the Appellate Division of the Supreme Court seeking stay on a High Court order that granted bail to former Awami League lawmaker Mohibur Rahman Manik in the case of bomb blast at his Chhatak residence.
   A High Court bench of Justice AK Badrul Huq and Justice Mohammad Fazlur Rahman on Monday granted bail to Manik for one year.
   The petition is likely to be heard tomorrow, sources in the office of the attorney general said.
   The Speedy Trial Tribunal in Sylhet on October 9, 2004 sentenced Manik and others to 10 years rigorous imprisonment, and fined Tk 5,000 each, in default to suffer imprisonment for six more months. They were tried under the Explosive Substances Act.
   Two persons were killed on March 15, 1999, while they were making bombs at the house of Manik under Chhatak upazila in Sunamganj. The police arrested Manik in May, 1999 for his involvement in bomb-making.
   Subrata Chowdhury moved the petition for Manik, and the deputy attorney general, Gulam Kibria, appeared for the government.

The three boatmen, who were arrested while trying to send 90 youths to Greece illegally through Chittagong seaport, were taken on a three-day remand for interrogation.
   The court ordered the investigation officer to submit the particulars of youths to the court by April 21 and after reviewing the report, it would decide the fate of the youths, the police said.
   The police said Salam Agency of Chittagong was involved along with the racket of along with the two travel agencies of Dhaka, and added that they were trying to arrest the owner of the agency.
   Meanwhile, the Navy filed a case accusing Momammad Selim, Lokman Hossain, Abdul Haq, Mohiuddin and Nurul Islam in this connection.
   The Bangladesh Navy personnel rescued 90 youths from an engine boat on Sunday evening from the boat that was anchored in the outer anchorage of river Karnaphuli.

The recently formed highway police will start functioning next month to curb crimes on highways, especially robbery on passenger buses and extortion of goods truck by organised gangs.
   Police outposts will be set up at 72 points on more-than-4,000-kilometre highway network, said sources in the home ministry.
   The distance between one outpost and the next will be 40 kilometres, the sources said. Each outpost will have one patrol vehicle for starters.
   The deputy inspector general of police, Shah Jamal Raj, will head the highway police while Morshed Alam and Shah Golam Mahmud will be superintendents-in-charge.
   ‘The highway police will hopefully start functioning within a month,’ the state minister for home affairs, Lutfozzaman Babar, told journalists on Tuesday.
   He said the ministry had planned to form the highway police three years ago.
   Each outpost will be manned by 20-25 personnel, Babar said. ‘A strong communication network will also be established so that none can escape after committing a crime.’
   A home ministry official said the existing police patrol was inadequate to ensure safety and security on the highways.
   The official said the ministry was very serious about intensified highway patrol as the business community had raised allegations that goods truck are subject to extortion and robbery.