Main Page «
Front Page «
Metro «
Business «
International «
Sports «
National «
Editorial «
Op-Ed «
Timeout «
Letters «

Archive «
Launch Supplement «
Special Supplements «

Speakers at a dialogue in Bagerhat urged the administration to take measures to reduce water logging in Fakirhat upazila.
   Water logging is a nagging problem in Fakirhat. Water remains stagnant here for more than six months following rainy season.
   The Fakirhat Upazila Climate Committee arranged the dialogue with the help of Nabolok-Care RVCC at the Fakirhat upazila auditorium recently.
   Some 40 persons including government officials, public representatives, local elites, NGO personnel and journalists took part in the dialogue.
   The Nabolok Care RVCC team leader Sajal Saha read out the keynote paper titled ‘Take immediate action to reduce the water logging of Fakirahat’.
   The speakers said about 15 thousand hectares of land of Rupsha in Khulna and Mollarhat, Fakirhat and Chitalmari upazilas in Bagerhat remain waterlogged most of the time of the year.
   The speakers noted that the bed of rivers have silted up and cannot discharge water to the beels due to hindrance of embankments.
   As the river beds have swelled up with silts, the rivers cannot hold and carry water during the rainy season, which causes water logging in the adjacent areas, they maintained.
   They also said that most of the canals were also filled up and cannot carry water during the rainy season.
   The influential people and the shrimp traders made dams and set bamboo-made pata (barrier) in the canals contributing to water logging, they added.
   The speakers put forward a 7-point charter of demands including dredging rivers, digging canals, enforcing tidal river management system and freeing water lands from the grabbers.
   Chaired by Khan Zahid Hassan, chairman of Fakirhat union parishad and also convener of the committee, the dialogue was addressed, among others, by the Fakirhat UNO Hossain Ali Khondokar, Bahirdia UP chairman Kazi Ismail Siddique, Nabolok assistant coordinator Mizanur Rahman Bijoy and Bimol Ghosh.

With the idea ‘Our school — we will develop’ in mind, teachers, guardians as well as members of the school management committee in Netrakona have taken ‘community plan for school developments 2005’ in association with the Sabalamby Unnayan Samity (SUS), a local non-government organisation.
   A teachers’ group from two local registered primary schools — Konapara Primary School and Kaliakona Primary School — joined the initiative.
   Konapara Primary school was established in 1992 through the donation of 33 decimal land by late Rahmat Ali at Konapara village under Shingher Bangla union of Netrakona sadar upazila.
   It is a tin-shed school with no partition for separate classes. There are only 7 benches and 4 chairs for 162 students. So, the students have to sit on gunny mat.
   There is no tube well and toilet. No separate room for teachers. Most of the students are from the poor families of Raidum Ruhi, Konapara and Gobindapur villages.
   In Kaliakona Primary School at Amtola union of Netrakona sadar there are only 3 class-rooms for 192 students.
   There was a tube well and a toilet but these are not functioning now. There are no good roads for running the vehicles to come to the school.
   No sport and game facility is existing.
   The SUS started a project titled Advocacy for Quality Primary Education with the assistance of Commonwealth Education fund (CEF) in August 2003.
   In 2004, 4 schools were selected at Singher Bangla and Amtola unions under Netrakona sadar upazila for ensuring quality education with the participation of community.
   The development agenda include increasing the number of classroom, recruiting community teacher, special coaching for weak student, gardening, plantation, collecting education and sports materials, road maintenance, organising annual sports and cultural function, repair of toilet and installing tube well and preparing participatory budget etc.

The Makbular Rahman Diabetic Hospital, established at private initiative 13 years ago, has been facing the problems of shortage of medical staff and dearth of fund for a long time.
   Late Makbular Rahman, a distinguished social leader and philanthropist of this region, set up the diabetic hospital at Mithapukur in the district town in 1993.
   The diabetic hospital, only one of its kind in the entire district, is equipped with modern equipment. But they are lying unused for want of technicians.
   The hospital had no qualified doctor for the last one year. Only recently a medical graduate has joined the hospital.
   The staff members of the hospital have not been getting salaries regularly. The management committee of the hospital has miserably failed to run it on sound footing, according to local sources.
   There are over 1,000 enlisted patients of this hospital. On an average 15 to 20 diabetic patients come to the hospital for medical check-up and advice.
   The salaries of the hospital staff are met from the fees of the visiting patients.
   The BIRDEM Hospital in Dhaka supplies medicines worth Tk 1,25,000 annually to this hospital for the treatment of the patients.
   It also gets some grants from the Panchagarh Sugar Mills and the social welfare department of the government.
   Some of the enlightened persons of the district are of the view that the government should come forward to provide all possible logistic and financial support to this privately run hospital as there is no facility for the treatment of diabetic patients in any state-run hospital in Panchagarh.
   Many of the affluent diabetic patients of this district go to other districts for their treatment.
   But the treatment of the poor diabetic patients goes by default in the absence of a full-fledged diabetic hospital in Panchagarh, they noted.