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A move for installing another harbour for navy ships in the Chittagong Port channel, opposite to the existing one, has
   created concern over risk- free movement of merchant vessels.
   The Bangladesh Navy is planning to make this move at a time when the parliamentary standing committee on the shipping ministry, the Chittagong Port Authority and other bodies strongly suggest re-location of the existing base, BNS Flotilla, to prevent ship accidents in the channel in the future.
   Port sources said the navy authorities, in a recent letter to the Chittagong Port Authority, informed it of their plan to establish another harbour opposite to the present one.
   The CPA, however, did not consent to the proposal, and asked navy to conduct a proper feasibility study and find another spot.
   ‘Questions have already been raised by different quarters over the location of the existing harbour as it hampers smooth movement of merchant vessels and is the main reason for the accidents that have occurred. So the proposal of another harbour opposite to the existing one cannot be acceptable,’ the CPA replied.
   Navy sources said the harbour project was in a very preliminary stage and they were conducting a feasibility study.
   ‘We are highly concerned over the move and if another navy harbour is built opposite to this one, the channel will become more risky for ships’ movement,’   said the harbour master of the port, Nazmul Alam.
   Port sources said operation in the port’s channel is usually tough because of some risky curves and the existence of BNS Flotilla just beside a dangerous curve, known as the ‘cutting bend’, and installation of another harbour opposite to the existing one would make the channel even more risky.
   Fear of accident constantly haunts the captains while negotiating the channel’s numerous curves, particularly the ‘cutting bend’, and existence of the naval base is the main reason for accidents in the channel, said sources.
   ‘A number of accidents took place in mid-channel and, in most cases, navy ships and other installations were damaged. So it will be unwise to set up another harbour on this bend,’ said a CPA official.
   In the latest accident on June 27, the naval installation was damaged severely after a merchant ship, CEC Copenhagen, hit it; 18 navy frigates were damaged and 20 sailors injured in an accident in September 2003 in the cutting bend, said port and shipping sources.
   In another major accident in 1994, a merchant ship hit a navy ship, causing damage to the latter, and another merchant ship, Eagle Breeze, collided with a navy frigate in 1989. Some minor accidents also occurred on different occasions, damaging the navy ships, they added.
   Demand for re-locating the naval base is always made after an accident at or near the ‘cutting bend’, but the navy authorities express their inability to move the harbour on grounds of financial constraint, said a senior CPA official.
   But it is not acceptable by any means that they will set up another base opposite to this one when suggestion for re-locating the existing one has been made by the CPA and the standing committee on the shipping ministry, said concerned officials.
   The parliamentary standing committee on the shipping ministry recently recommended shifting of the existing naval base from the port channel to facilitate hazard-free movement of ships entering and leaving the port.

People are routinely harassed by the traffic police for using cars fitted with tinted glass in a situation that resulted from inconsistencies between traffic regulations and the rule on imports of car.
   Traffic regulations prohibit the use of tinted-glass cars, but the importers said there had been no restriction on the imports of such cars; and the number of such cars is increasing day by day.
   Related laws prohibit the use of tinted glass in privately-owned cars. But the regulation is relaxed for VIPs and film actors who can obtain permission for such use from the Ministry of Home Affairs.
   The Bangladesh Reconditioned Vehicle Importers and Dealers’ Association president, Abdul Mannan Khasru, said there is no restriction on the import cars fitted with tinted glass. Car importer Auto Galaxy, owned by Mannan, has been importing such cars for 20 years.
   Use of cars fitted with tinted glass was prohibited to prevent criminal activities, said police commissioner Mizanur Rahman.
   The traffic department fines any violators of the rule with fines ranging between Tk 1,250 and Tk 2,500.
   Morshed Alam, 35, a businessman who uses a car fitted with tinted glass, said he had obtained a permission to use the car. ‘When the police stop me, I get away by showing the permission.’
   The driver of a Youngone company chairman said he had been driving a tinted-glass car for a year and a half. And he had to pay Tk 1,200 in fine a year ago.
   He said the police often harass drivers although the registration certificate, or the blue book, says that the car had been imported fitted with tinted glass, he said.
   ‘When I try to argue with the policemen, they are about to file a case against me alleging that I misbehaved with them,’ he said. ‘I manage the police by paying Tk 100 to Tk 200.’
   Such cars are imported from Japan and the use of tinted glass is allowed in developed world, said a sales executive at Haq’s Bay Bangladesh.
   The upper middle-class people are dominant among the users of reconditioned vehicles and a large number of them are afraid to use such cars because of police harassment.
   Mannan said his company imports 200 to 300 cars fitted with tinted glass a year. Tinted glasses are fitted with cars to prevent rays that are harmful for skin and eyes, he said.
   The Dhaka Metropolitan Police deputy commissioner, traffic south, Ansaruddin Khan Pathan said the home affairs ministry in 2004 ordered not to import cars fitted with tinted glass; but the importers did not go by it.
   Mannan said there had been no such specific order from the home ministry; the ministry requested the importers not to bring in such cars.
   Imposition of ban on the imports of such cars requires an order to be issued involving the ministries of home affairs, commerce and communications. The request was not such an affair, he said.
   Ansaruddin said the police penalised 740 such cars between January 1 and June 30 on charge of making changes in the chassis, including the fitting of tinted glass.
   The changes also include fitting extra bumper with cars, railing with pick-ups, changing seats or looking glass in number and size without permission.

BM Bakir Hossain, who topped the list in spending in the ballot battle among the candidates, was elected guardians’ representative with the highest number of votes to the governing body of the Viqarunnisa Noon School and College on Friday.
   The election was held at the school’s Baily Road branch on Friday.
   Bakir won 2,833 votes, and M Monir Hossain 2,446 votes in the election from the school section, sources said.
   In the college section election, Nilufar Islam won 282 votes and Rowshan Ali Bhuiyan received 281 votes.
   Thirteen candidates — nine in the school section election and four in the college section election — contested for the four positions of representatives.
   Young boys and girls sought votes for their candidates along with parents amid security measures to avoid any untoward incidents.
   Some candidates used microbuses to bring the voters to the centre. Around 200 microbuses, sporting banners in favour of Bakir, plied the street. Bakir is also a leader of the Sonali Bank Employees’ Association.
   The representatives were elected through direct votes from about 12,000 guardians for a three-year term to the 10-member governing body.

The first-ever hybrid exchange in Chittagong will be opened by this year to connect mobile network with landline.
   The exchange is financed by a consortium of UN Development Programme, Bangladesh Telegraph and Telephone Baord, GrameenPhone, CityCell, AKTel and Sheba Telecom which was sold out to Egyptian Orascom in October 2004 and now in operation as Banglalink.
   The work on the hybrid point of interconnection, which began in 2003, is going on in full swing with the technical assistance from the International Telecommunications Union, said the officials of the Bangladesh Telecommunica-tions Regulatory Commission, which will manage the exchange.
   The point of interconnection is a point where signals are conveyed from one telecommunications network to another.
   The existing exchanges are bilateral, with connectivity between two operators. A hybrid exchange will facilitate use of more operators than one, said a commission official.
   They officials said the exchange would have 12,000-line circuit capacity, which will allow about 1.20 lakh subscribers to talk at a time.
   The four private operators — GrameenPhone, AKTel, CityCell and Sheba Telecom — earlier set up a Tandem exchange at Moghbazar in Dhaka in 2003 under a $2-million turnkey project to expand mobile connectivity with the landline network. The exchange allows operators to have 2 lakh connections with the landline network.
   There are now about 60 lakh mobile subscribers of five operators, including the state-owned Teletalk Bangladesh Limited; but 90 per cent of the users have no connectivity with about 8.5 lakh landlines of the telephone board.

Bangladesh Paribesh Andolan and Save the Environment Movement at a rally on Friday demanded immediate reclamation of 43 canals in the Dhaka city from occupation to improve the drainage system.
   Addressing the programme at Shahbagh, the leaders of the green groups said although the Water Supply and Sewerage Authority had taken an initiative to reclaim 13, out of the identified 43, canals, the initiative stalled midway.
   They said Dhaka WASA increased the amount from Tk 145 crore to Tk 203 crore for a project, ‘removal of water logging in the Dhaka city,’ and Tk 50 crore has been spent under the project in the current season. But the city dwellers did not profit from the project all, they said.
   They said grabbing of government lands and encroachment of rivers, canals, ponds and other water bodies were the main reasons of water logging in the city.
   They demanded imme- diate recovery of 6000 acres of identified land encroa- ched in and adjoining the Dhaka city.
   They also demanded effective steps to build the city with proper planning based on the Dhaka City Master Plan 1997 and the Wetland Protection Act 2000.
   They demanded punishment for the encroachers.
   Professor Kazi Saleh Ahmed, Save Environment Movement convener Abu Naser Khan, BAPA general secretary Mohidul Haque Khan, joint secretary Mihir Biswas, Taksim M Khan, Zakir Hossain, BAPA executive member Iqbal Habib, Dr Nur Uddin, Ashraf Amir Ullah addressed the meeting.

Speakers at a rally on Friday demanded punishment for the National Security Intelligence men responsible for Thursday’s attack on the photojournalists.
   At the rally organised by journalists in front of the National Press Club, they also demanded withdrawal of the ‘false’ case filed against the newsmen on Thursday night.
   Later the newsmen,
   wearing black clothes on their mouths, brought out a procession which paraded different city streets.
   According to the case filed by an NSI man, Sanaullah, with the Ramna police station, the intelligence men confined Enamul Kabir as he had ignored their request to take a snap of the NSI office, and later showed his identity card as a photojournalist of Bhorer Kagoj, although he (Kabir) verbally claimed himself of Janakantha.
   On suspicion, they confined Kabir in the NSI office, but he contacted with his colleagues who swooped on the NSI men. The photojournalists had assaulted the NSI men with iron rod and sticks, and took away the mobile phone set from Sanaullah, the complainant said.

A seminar on ‘distance education: Australian perspective’ was held at Southeast University at Banani in the capital on July 3.
   Shahjahan Khan, professor of mathematics and computing of the University of Southern Queensland, Australia, delivered the keynote speech.
   He explained the features of distance education at his university. The speech was followed by a question-answer session.
   The Bangladesh Open University founder vice-chancellor, M Shamsher Ali, also a pioneer in distance education, attended the seminar as chief guest.
   He spoke of his dream of popularising this programme.
   Business studies dean Md Muinuddin Khan, also chairperson of the seminar, urged efforts for a
   memorandum of understanding with the University of Southern Queensland.

Lion Sheikh Kabir Hossain, former chairman of the Bangladesh Red Crescent Society, was elected a director in the board of directors of the International Association of Lions Clubs for the 2005-07 year at its 88th conference in Hong Kong between June 27 and July 1.
   The Lions Clubs International is the largest service organisation in the world with about 1.5 million members serving for the distressed in 194 countries.
   A Lion since 1976 and a member of the Lions Clubs of Old Town of Dhaka, Kabir Hossain has held many important positions within the association. In recognition to his services, he obtained a good number of awards.

Nari Unnayan Shakti, a non-governmental organisation working for women, organised a gathering of lactating mothers and children under two years of age at its Banashree office in Dhaka on July 7.
   More than 300 children and their mothers attended the event.
   The objective of the gathering was to draw attention of the public and private sector employees to ensure the rights of breast feeding of the working mothers’ children.
   Thousands of children in the country are dying every year of different diseases which could be prevented only through breast feeding and natural balanced food.
   Profit making national and multinational companies are creating confusion among the lactating mothers and
   provoking them to use powder milk as an alternative to mother’s milk.
   Nari Unnayan Shakti has expanded its campaign for breast feeding in Dhaka, Chittagong and Barisal.

Suspected shooter beaten
A Dhaka city ward commissioner and his men assaulted a young man suspecting him to be a shooter at Mirpur in the Dhaka city early Friday. The police said Imtiazuddin Hiron, 25, had reportedly at shot Masud Khan, Ward 10 commissioner, near his house at Mirpur Section 1, but Masud escaped unhurt. Masud Khan and his bodyguard shot Hiron, but both of them missed the target. Local people, led by Masud, later caught Hiron and beat him. Hiron was under treatment in Dhaka Medical College Hospital. The police did not find any weapon from Hiron. He told newsmen he was on his way to the house of his sister, Nazma Kabir, a neighbour of Masud when he was attacked. He denied shooting at Masud. The police said Masud and Nazma Kabir had rivalry for long.

Keraniganj Press
Club body
Md Abu Taleb of the daily Ittefaq was elected president and Md Abdul Gani of the daily Inquilab general secretary to the executive committee of the Keraniganj Press Club in an election on Wednesday. The election to the 13-member executive committee was conducted by the club’s founding secretary, Shafique Chowdhury. The other office bearers are vice-president Siddque Sebul of Dainik Janata, assistant general secretary Raihan Khan of Dainik Bhorer Kagaj, treasurer Sultan Mahmood of Dainik Khabar, organising secretary Alamgir Hossain of Manabjamin, sports and cultural secretary Ziaur Rahman of Naya Diganta, press and publicity secretary Mujibur Rahman of Dainik Khabarpatra, office secre-tary Abdul Aziz Labu of Saptahik Bijoy Sangbad and members Quazi Abul Bashar, Johurul Haq Jahir, Selim Hossain and Abdul Hye.

Workshop on women’s studies
ends
A three-day international workshop on ‘regional development of curriculum for women’s studies’ ended on Friday. The workshop was held under a project of the Netherlands-based Institute of Social Science and the department of women’s studies of the University of Dhaka. Participants from India, Pakistan, Nepal, China, the Netherlands, and the United States joined discussions along side researchers from Dhaka and Jahangirnagar University. They discussed courses and syllabus on gender studies and proposed extensive and elaborate outlines. The founder chair of the university’s women’s studies department Nazma Chowdhury, representative from the Institute of Social Science, the Netherlands Amrita Chachi and workshop convener Runa Laila addressed the concluding session, said a release.
— New Age