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Different Islamic banks are recruiting graduates from qoumi madrassahs at different tiers of their operations, although the government does not recognise the degrees offered by these institutions.
   The banks patronise the madrassah graduates by incorporating them in different tiers of their operations because they do not get employment in public and private organisations, sources in the central shariah board for the Islamic Banks of Bangladesh said.
   The banks are providing them with various jobs as part of a plan, they confirmed when talking to New Age.
   The shariah board, which ensures compliance with Islamic rules and practices by and balanced policy decisions (fatwa) in the Islamic banks, has the approval of the Bangladesh Bank.
   The board has 14 member banks and 44 honorary members, according to a document of the board.
   ‘They [graduates from qoumi madrassahs] are citizens of this country and spent years to learn something from qoumi madrassahs, so they should be patronised at various levels,’ said M Mukhlesur Rahman, secretary general of the board.
   ‘It does not matter whether their certificates have the government’s recognition or not,’ he said. ‘A good number of qoumi madrassah graduates work in different post and positions in six full-fledged Islamic Banks in the country.’
   The six banks are Islami Bank Bangladesh Limited, Al-Arafah Islami Bank Limited, the Oriental Bank Limited, Social Investment Bank Limited, Shahjalal Islami Bank Limited and Export Import Bank of Bangladesh Limited.
   There are also eight banks with Islamic banking branches. The banks are Prime Bank Limited, Dhaka Bank Limited, Southeast Bank Limited, Jamuna Bank Limited, The Premier Bank Limited, HSBC Bangladesh (amanah finance branch), Standard Chartered Bank (Islamic banking centre) and The City Bank Limited. They are all member banks of the shariah board.
   ‘The government is aware that a large number of madrassahs have long been offering certificates to thousands of students that do not have any state recognition,’ said a top education ministry official. ‘The marginal students, mostly dropouts from primary schools and ebtidayee madrassahs, get admitted to qoumi madrassahs.’
   About 20,000 qoumi madrassahs have been established in different parts of the country and run without any assistance from the government. About 1.50 lakh teachers teach over 20 lakh students there.
   Despite demands by the Bangladesh Qoumi Madrassah Board and some Islamic leaders and scholars, the government is yet to recognise the madrassahs for their hard-line Islamic religious teaching and reported involvement in fostering militancy.
   Intelligence agencies carried out investigations into the qoumi madrassahs after the August 17 serial bombings and marked 233 madrassahs where they said militant training was taking place.
   The government, which ordered the investigation, also asked intelligence officials to keep vigil on the madrassahs, sparking resentment among Islamist leaders.
   Fazlul Haq Aminee of Islami Oikya Jote, a component in the four-party ruling alliance, and Obaidul Huq, khatib of Baitul Mukarram, warned the government of not harassing qoumi madrassah students in the name of raids.
   The government has recently imposed ban on enrolment of foreign students in qoumi madrassahs.
   According to the Bangladesh Qoumi Madrassah Board, the madrassahs are offering a 16-year course and a student has to learn 35 subjects in a five-tier education system from class I to XVI.
    ‘The primary stage includes class I to V, junior secondary class from class VI to class VII, secondary and higher secondary from class IX to XII,’ the board’s secretary general, Mohammad Abdul Zabbar, said.
   The bachelor’s degree spans from class XIII to class XIV and master’s degree from class XV to XVI, he added.

Interference and intimidation by people’s representatives was the major complaint district commissioners came up with at a three-day conference at the Bangladesh Secretariat from March 2 to 4, where they related the problems they face when discharging their duties.
   They suggested that the deputy commissioners should be allowed freedom from such intervention and intimidation.
   The very concept of keeping the deputy commissioner, bureaucracy in other words, free from intervention by people’s representatives, especially members of parliament, most of whom are politicians, is quite appealing.
   Most of the elected representatives and bureaucrats, however, are too preoccupied with their own needs and demands to even try to appreciate each other’s limitations.
   The deputy commissioners do not want to accept the reality that the representatives are elected on the basis of certain commitments to the electorate and that they need to fulfil the commitments, as they have to go back to the electorate even if they do not run in the next elections.
   The members of parliament, on the other hand, do not bother to find out, let alone appreciate, what their actual responsibilities are.
   If defined, in broader lines, their responsibilities are to make law and keep watch on the activities of the executive. However, most of them assert (or at least try to) control over almost everything.
   They engineer distribution of tenders among fellow (qualified or newly emerged) contractors, most of whom are their relatives, intervene in the activities of the administration, union parishad (council), and gram sarkar (village government), including distribution of wheat among the destitute and rehabilitation of rural roads, and even influence the police to set free criminals.
   As representatives of the central government in districts, the deputy commissioners oversee various activities, including all development activities, law and order situation, and local government bodies, bear judicial responsibilities, and conduct elections, public examinations and relief operations.
   The wish-list the deputy commissioners came up with at the conference is self-contradictory and has thus created a paradox: they want to be either relieved of some of their responsibilities or given more authority.
   Interestingly, not a single deputy commissioner proposed to delegate or share (with other state organs or by creating new bodies) any of their existing responsibilities. Instead, they expressed their desire to have exclusive control over a number of areas, including funds allocated by the central government for different parliamentary constituencies, development activities carried out by union council activities, monitoring private educational institutions, and of course controlling police administrations at both upazila and district levels.
   Now, what can be the solution? It is easier to say that responsibilities (either self imposed or given legally by the state) of the lawmakers as well of the district administrators, by creating strong local government in all spheres of administration and by separating the judiciary from the executive branch.
   Both the lawmakers and the deputy commissioners will be relieved from local development activities and the deputy commissioners (and all magistrates) can be relieved from their judicial role.
   The irony is: almost none of the lawmakers, including some ministers, and the deputy commissioners want a strong and effective local government system.
   A number of senior ministers, including finance and planning minister M Saifur Rahman, who incidentally addressed the conference, and communications minister Nazmul Huda, along with many lawmakers, has foiled an initiative of the present government to re-introduce the elected upazila parishad system.
   Another irony is: although there are differences of opinion between (political stalwarts of) the government and the bureaucracy over various issues, both sides share the same view as not to separate the judiciary from the executive or (at least) to delay the process.
   But these negative activities and attitudes against the introduction of a strong local government system and the separation of judiciary are clear violation of articles 9 and 22 of the constitution.
   Article 9 says ‘the state shall encourage local government institutions composed of representatives of the areas concerned…’ while article 22 says ‘the state shall ensure the separation of the judiciary from the executive branch organs….’
   From the political point of view, denial to introduce a strong local government system and the separation of the judiciary is clear violation of articles 3.4 and 3.6 of the election manifesto of the ruling BNP.
   At the conference, the deputy commissioners reiterated an age-old allegation that the ministries hardly implemented their suggestions.
   ‘Whenever we put forward a suggestion, we are told that steps will be taken. But the commitments are hardly met. There should be a result-oriented timeframe for the commitments,’ one deputy commissioner said, echoing the sentiment of his colleagues. Their predecessors also did the same ‘futile’ exercise.
   At the conference, the top brass of the government, including prime minister Khaleda Zia and LGRD and cooperatives minister Abdul Mannan Bhuiyan, asked the district administrators to ‘implement programmes remaining above fear and intimidation’ and ‘to work for the interest of the republic’.
   These ‘old-fashioned’, ‘sugar-coated’ words are not new to the bureaucracy as well as to the people, as almost all the heads of government and ministers, and some senior bureaucrats too, uttered those words repeatedly.
   The only twist, at the conference, was cabinet secretary Abdul Halim’s veiled admission of the much-talked-about politicisation of administration. ‘The problem of politicisation of the administration cannot be resolved overnight as it is an old problem’, he was quoted as saying in his concluding remarks on the final day of the conference.
   The annual conference of the deputy commissioners can prove to be a good occasion ‘not for interaction between the centre and the field, and for the interest of the republic’ unless the politicians, and lawmakers too, abide by the constitution and fulfil their election commitments; and members of the bureaucracy, including the deputy commissioners, ‘really’ work for the interest of the republic by upholding the constitution.

In a bid to cope with the growing demand for electricity, the government has taken an initiative to purchase surplus power of captive power plants, which the private sector industries have set up for their own use.
   The Power Division is now scrutinising the draft of the proposed captive power policy prepared by the Power Cell and multinational consulting firm, Pricewaterhouse Coopers recently, sources in the division said.
   ‘After reviewing the policy we will send it to the law ministry for vetting and then it will be sent to the cabinet committee on economic affairs and other related ministries for approval. The policy is expected to be approved by June,’ said a source.
   The government will be able to purchase over 350MW of power that remains surplus during peak hours at private industries across the country, he said.
   The Power Cell, research and planning unit of the division, meanwhile, started negotiation with three companies at Chittagong for purchasing about 25MW of power from their captive plants, the division sources said.
   ‘The cell has sought executive power from the government for negotiation with the companies before the policy is approved. Once the policy is approved the agreement will be signed in line with the policy,’ said a source.
   If the negotiation is successful the government will purchase about 14MW of power from the PHP group, 2.5MW from Heidelberg Cement (Ruby Cement) and some 8MW from RahimAfroz Energy after the government approves the policy, he said.
   He said that the cell had proposed that the price of power should not be over Tk 1.91 per unit (kilowatt-hour) and the prices would vary depending on where the industries were located.
   The Bangladesh Energy Regulatory Commission will fix the price and mode of purchase in line with which the Power Development Board will purchase power from the companies.
   The average production cost of power at the plants of the Power Development Board is about Tk 2.5 per unit. The production cost at gas-based plants, however, is about Tk 1.6.
   The source said that the companies would bear the cost for injecting power into the national grid.
   The policy estimates the total captive power generation in Bangladesh industries at about 600 MW and 30 per cent of the power that remains surplus during peak hours, could be taken to the national grid.
   It notes that in the east zone (eastern side of the river Jamuna) captive power generation at Dhaka is about 285 MW, at Chittagong some 157 MW and at Sylhet it is about 71MW.
   In the west zone the generation at Rajshahi is about 50MW, at Khulna 27MW and at Barisal 3MW.
   A division official, however, said the total captive power generation would be about 1100MW as there remained many unapproved plants that could be easily identified.
   ‘So a total of 350MW power could be taken from these plants to the national grid,’ he said.
   The gap between demand and supply of power at present is 1500MW to 2000MW as the PDB has a capacity to produce about 3000-3500MW of power against a demand for 5000MW.
   He said that some 200MW-250MW of power could be taken to the national grid from these industries immediately after the approval of the policy.

Palli Bidyut Sangram Parishad (action council for rural electrification) enforced an indefinite strike at Kansat in protest at the clash in which four were killed and more than 50 were injured at Shibganj in Chapainawabganj on Thursday.
   The Rajshahi mayor, Mizanur Rahman Minu, also minister in charge of Chapainwabganj, held the council leaders responsible for Thursday’s clash and vowed to take legal action against them.
   A murder case was filed with the Shibganj police against more than a thousand people after the clash on Thursday.
   The council leaders announced the agitation programme for an indefinite period soon after the clash on Thursday to push for their 14-point demands.
   The council activists continued going out on demonstrations and holding rallies for the whole day on Friday.
   They demanded punishment for those responsible for the death of innocent people. They also blamed the local BNP activists for Thursday’s incident.
   Carrying sticks, the demonstrators paraded the highway for the whole day. The council convener, Golam Rabbani, at a rally said he had been feeling insecure because of raids by the police and continuous threats from local BNP leaders, including Ashraful Alam and Shamim Kabir Helim.
   He urged the administration to ensure security for the people and to keep vigil so that no
   untoward incident could take place.
   Mizanur Rahman, at a briefing at the local circuit house on Friday, alleged the action council leaders staged the incident as part of a conspiracy with political ill-motive.
   The Shibganj upazila nirbahi officer, Dewan Mohammad Abdus Samad, said the situation was under control.
   The council supporters barricaded the Chapainawabanj-Sonamasjid Highway with electric poles and tree logs in different places, including Pukuria, Gopalnagar, Quaiyumpur, along the highway.
   They also dug holes in different places on the highway, forcing vehicle movement to a halt.
   Traffic also came to a halt on the Kansat-Chaudala, Kansat-Bholahat and Shibganj-Khaserhat roads.
   The officials at the Sonamasjid land port said that more than 100 trucks, carrying imported goods, remained stranded for two days.
   The clash began when some BNP activists, holding a rally, attacked the procession of the action council as it reached Bakirmor at Shibganj Thursday afternoon. At least four were killed, and more than 50 were injured.
   The deceased were Mahbubul Alam, 60, a local leader of the BNP’s peasant wing Krishak Dal, Akram Dad Khan, 43, of Salimabad, Abdul Jilani, 14, of Lahalamari of Kansat and Masidul Haque Masir of Dewanjaigir at Shibganj. Masidul was found dead in a garden at Bakirmor.
   Masidul and Mahbubul were buried in their village after the post-mortem examinations at Chapainawabganj Sadar Hospital on Friday. Akram Dad Khan and Abdul Jilani buried in their village without post-mortem examination.
   Haji Selim, elder brother of the Shibganj municipal chairman-cum-BNP leader Shamim Kabir Helim, held local BNP lawmaker Shahjahan Miah responsible for the incident.
   Selim alleged Shahjahan was staying in Dhaka, directing his activists to attack the innocent people of the locality.
   The New Age correspondent in Rajshahi said the city Awami League brought out a procession and staged a rally in protest at the incident at Sahib Bazar Friday afternoon.
   The city Awami League vice-president, Mohammad Ali Kamal, chaired the rally held after the procession.
   Awami League unit general secretary AHM Khairuzzaman Litton, joint secretary Shafique Rahman Badsha, Tabibur Rahman Sheikh and Aslam Sarkar also spoke.
   The Awami League leaders demanded the arrest of the killers and punishment for them.

Chevron Corporation, which acquired Unocal few months back, has expressed its desire to sell its assets in Bangladesh to Reliance Industries, a private energy company of India which will export gas from Bangladesh to India in liquefied form, according to an Indian newspaper.
   ‘…in the dialogue that the two companies had few weeks ago Chevron has expressed its desire to sell its Bangladeshi assets to Reliance,’ the daily Pioneer reported on April 6.
   ‘The proposal under discussion includes Reliance acquiring former Unocal’s [now a part of Chevron] 16.1tcf reserves in Bangladesh. Chevron, it is understood, is reviewing the assets that Unocal had acquired because it makes very little economic sense for the company to own these assets,’ it said.
   Chevron officials in Bangladesh said the report was completely ‘baseless’ and the company was not in talks with any company to sell its assets in Bangladesh.
   ‘It is completely baseless. We are not in talks with any company to sell our Bangladeshi assets,’ a Chevron official told New Age on Friday.
   The Pioneer report said ‘at present, Chevron owns Jalalabad gas field which produces 100 million cubic feet a day, supplying about 10 per cent of Bangladesh’s consumption. Besides this, there are two other fields – Bibiyana, which is estimated to hold about 6 trillion cubic feet of gas reserves, and Moulvibazar, which is now being assessed for reserves’.
   It claimed that there was ‘no’ domestic market for the gas as the demand from households and industry was low.
   Petrobangla currently supplies around 1480 million cubic feet of gas per day against
   the demand of around 1,650mmcfd.
   ‘For Reliance the same asset makes very good business sense as it is already developing the eastern pipeline grid for transporting the gas from Krishna-Godavari Basin. The company, if it acquires the asset, will set up a pipeline from Bangladesh to evacuate the gas, which could join the eastern grid that it is already developing,’ the newspaper said.
   It claimed that ‘besides its (Reliance) own gas fields development will change the fortunes of the country and partner company Petrobangla can export gas alongside other foreign companies operating in the region’.
   Unocal wanted to export gas in 2002-2003 to India but the government had to backtrack in the face of strong protest from various quarters.

Installation of scanners at the land and sea ports to combat smuggling of weapons, explosives, drugs and other goods has become uncertain.
   Persistent smuggling of deadly items forced the home ministry to go for the initiative in 2003, but lack of seriousness of the concerned authorities stalled it at the end, the ministry sources said.
   ‘Dillydallying by the National Board of Revenue and the high cost of such machines are the reasons behind the failure to set up scanners in three years,’ a ministry official said.
   The ministry stresses installation of the scanners to prevent smuggling of deadly weapons and other goods along with legal ones, he added.
   ‘Scope is there to bring illegal arms, explosives and explosive substances under the cover of legally imported goods through both land and sea ports,’ he said.
   According to the home ministry and intelligent officials, arms, explosives and drugs could easily be smuggled in, seriously affecting the overall security of the country.
   ‘To ensure security, all the imported goods must be scanned properly on their arrival at the ports,’ an official of the National Security Intelligence told New Age.
   A number of discussions and meetings regarding the initiative held at the home ministry in 2003. The following year, a team from the ministry visited a number of countries to see the operation of scanning machines.
   A NBR official at the 36th meeting of the national committee to combat smuggling said they had almost completed specifications of the scanners.
   In the backdrop of the August 17 countrywide serial-bombing that required a large amount of explosives, the meeting reiterated the need for immediate installation of scanners at all ports.
   The NBR, however, failed to say anything in this regard at the recently held 37th meeting of the committee.
   The home ministry requested the Land Port Authorities to install scanners but they turned it down, saying, ‘It is too costly’.
   The meeting also urged the NBR to take steps in this regard.
   Frustrated by the delay, the state minister for home affairs, Lutfozzaman Babar, hinted that the government might make mandatory installation of scanners in all ports to prevent smuggling of deadly weapons and other goods.
   Babar, who was the meeting chair, also expressed dissatisfaction over the output of the anti-smuggling drive and directed the concerned officials to carry out the drive in a more coordinated and effective way.

No steps have been taken to strengthen security at Chittagong Shah Amanat International Airport five days after the government had decided to make the major airports better protected.
   According to sources, the security system at the airport has rather slackened in recent times, as most of the close circuit television cameras were not functioning properly.
   Sources said that nine closed-circuit television cameras out of the total 14, which were installed at the airport on March 23, 2001 to upgrade the airport security system, had lost zooming capacity more than a year ago.
   The sources said at times the cameras could record images within a radius of 10-15 feet only and it was causing difficulties for the security personnel to keep vigil on the activities at the airport.
   Shahin Farhad, manager of the Shah Amanat International Airport, said that they were yet to receive any directive from the ministry concerned to strengthen the airport security further. He, however, added that they would sit in a meeting with the relevant agencies on Monday to review the security system at the airport.
   'Though the airport is not well-protected, its security system is not in a disarray,’ he said adding that they had informed higher authorities of the CCTV troubles, but had received no respond in this connection so far.
   Sources said that the Ministry of Home Affairs and the Ministry of Civil Aviation and Tourism in a joint meeting on Sunday last had decided to upgrade security at the country’s major airports to international standard in keeping with the changing global scenario.
   The sources added that the meeting had decided to deploy the Rapid Action Battalion and the Armed Police Battalion
   with dog squads to tighten the security of the airports and the decision had been implemented at Zia International Airport in Dhaka on the following day.

Pakistan’s mainstream opposition parties said on Friday they might stay out of elections next year if their exiled leaders are barred from returning home and a caretaker government is not set up.
   Former prime ministers, Benazir Bhutto and Nawaz Sharif, have been living in exile for several years and president Pervez Musharraf, who is widely expected to stay in office for another term after 2007 general elections, has vowed to block their return to power.
   Leaders of Bhutto’s Pakistan Peoples Party and Sharif’s Pakistan Muslim League met the US assistant secretary of state, Richard Boucher, on Thursday and told him that their leaders must be allowed to take part in the elections.
   ‘We told him (Boucher) these leaders must be allowed to return to the country and a caretaker government should be set up to ensure free and fair elections in the country,’ Raja Zafar-ul-Haq, a key aide to Sharif, said on Friday.
   ‘If these conditions are not met there is a possibility that we might boycott the elections.’
   The marginalisation of Bhutto and Sharif has allowed the Islamist opposition to exert greater influence in Pakistan, analysts say, and an Islamist alliance forms the largest opposition grouping in parliament.
   Boucher, who also met Musharraf, and Pakistan’s new election commissioner and other politicians, stressed that Washington was interested in seeing fair elections and an eventual return to civilian rule.
   Musharraf promised to step down as army chief by the end of 2004 but later backed out of his pledge, and presently he is constitutionally required to give up his uniform next year.
   Musharraf is expected to be given another five-year term by the assemblies that emerge from next year’s elections.
   Bhutto and Sharif were bitter rivals in the 1990s, but formed the multi-party Alliance for the Restoration of Democracy after Musharraf came to power.
   Sharif was ousted by Musharraf in a bloodless coup in 1999 and was sent to exile to Saudi Arabia, but he is now in London. Having lived in self-exile since 1999, Bhutto faces graft charges in Pakistan and abroad and faces arrest if she comes home.

The United States has said rising extremism, abuses by security forces, and intractable polarisation of the two major political parties in Bangladesh has posed serious threats to advances made by the country over the past 15 years.
   The US State Department in its report on Supporting Human Rights and Democracy: The US Record 2005–2006, made these observations.
   It said weak political and governmental institutions, pervasive corruption, and general indifference by ruling parties to human rights continued to undermine basic civil liberties.
   The report released on Wednesday and submitted to Congress said extrajudicial killings, torture, and other widespread abuses by law enforcement personnel such as the police and the RAB who went largely unpunished, and ‘the BNP exploited its position to gain unfair advantage over the opposition.’
   About upcoming national elections, it said Bangladesh’s elections were generally held in a free and fair manner, although politics was traditionally acrimonious.
   The Awami League has threatened to boycott the general elections expected in January 2007 unless the BNP accepted its demands for major changes in the caretaker government and electoral system.
   The report said US human rights and democracy goals in Bangladesh included full participation by political parties in free and fair national elections in 2007 and greater protection of human rights.
   The United States urged the opposition to exercise, not surrender, its rights, and pressed the government to allow lawful opposition activity.
   It said the US brought Bangladeshi-American public officials to Bangladesh to discuss democracy and the American political system, including such issues as voter rights and preventing voter intimidation.
   The US-funded numerous projects to promote democracy in Bangladesh and lay the foundation for 2007 elections. These initiatives included a programme to conduct professional leadership training courses for 355 mid-level leaders from all major parties and a programme in which 20,000 members of those parties’ student wings participated in festivals and training events aimed at better defining youth-related issues within party platforms.
   A US-funded survey on the integrity of the 2001 voters’ list revealed that eight per cent of its names were inaccurate, which became an important part of the public debate on whether to create a new list or revise the existing one.
   On religious freedom it said while the constitution guarantees freedom of religion, the government’s record of protecting religious minorities was inconsistent, and the police were often ineffective in assisting members of religious minorities who were victims of crimes.
   About the Ahmadiyya community, the report said the under secretary of state for political affairs and the assistant secretary of state for south Asian affairs met with leaders of all religious minority groups to underscore support for their rights and safety against persecution and violence.
   The International Khatme Nubawat Movement of Bangladesh continued its often-violent campaign to force the government to declare members of the Ahmadiyya sect as non-Muslims, but the government last year took concerted steps to protect Ahmadiyyas, due to US and other diplomatic pressure.
   It said an Ahmadiyya missionary, along with members of other minority communities and human rights activists, travelled to various locations in the United States through the International Visitor Leadership Programme.
   ‘Because minorities, especially the Hindus, were subjected to intimidation and other forms of pressure during previous election campaigns and the United States increased its monitoring of this issue in anticipation of the 2007 elections,’ it said
   On freedom of the press, it said the United States promoted media freedom and freedom of speech in Bangladesh. US efforts focused attention on the security and freedom of journalists, who continued to face pressure from criminals, political activists, and Islamist extremists.
   It said the US sponsored training for 48 journalists, emphasising investigative reporting skills for those who cover stories involving violence against women and children’s rights, and also sponsored training for reporters to serve as watchdogs in elections.
   As the general election approaches, US diplomacy efforts continued to promote respect for freedom of association and assembly for all participants in the democratic process.
   On corruption it said the US last year worked with other donors and the government to design a long-term, government-wide anti-corruption strategy, which led to a draft national integrity strategy. This draft was under review by several ministries and, once adopted, will set the road map for the government’s overall approach to combat corruption.
   The United States collaborated with 11 local and international organisations to launch a test initiative entitled ‘In Quest of Good Governance,’ to promote citizen participation in the allocation and use of resources in their respective areas. The Moulvibazar district in northeast Bangladesh was the first pilot area.

After four years in office, the state minister for education, ANM Ehsanul Hoque Milan, now believes that members of the cabinet are burdened ‘too much’ with files that can easily be signed and cleared by officials at the lower echelon of each government organisation.
   No justification is there for a minister to sign a large number of files every day and it is not the duty of a minister, at all, says Milan.
   ‘Most of the files that I put my signatures on every day should not come to me in the first place,’ he told New Age. ‘Such a practice only creates and prolongs logjam in administrative affairs, especially in the education sector.’
   Twenty-two sections at the education ministry – 16 general and 6 planning – produce more than 100 kinds of files, most of which are sent to the minister and the state minister for approval.
   The files cross eight different stages, consuming at least two months, before reaching the table of the minister or the state minister.
   ‘Ministers are policymakers; they are not there to merely put their signatures on one file after the other,’ he said. ‘Their duty is to deal with policy matters and decisions of critical importance.’
   ‘Unfortunately, we follow a century-old system and have become confined to such a practice,’ he added.
   Milan then went on relating the work he does on a regular day.
   He signs 25 files every day, on an average. Only one or two of these files, especially summary notes on issues such as appointment of vice-chancellor to a university or chairman of an education board, are sent to the Prime Minister’s Office.
   ‘I even sign files on the approval of an overseas trip of a professor or a government schoolteacher,’ he said. ‘The education directorate can give such approvals.’
   ‘I signed a preliminary approval for academic recognition of a non-government junior high school in Cox’s Bazar,’ he added. ‘The district education officer or, at best, the education board could have done it.’
   Milan believes a ‘criteria-based’ policy should be introduced to speed up the file despatch system.
   ‘I usually go through one or two paragraphs [of a file] before commenting “can be approved” and putting my signature,’ he said. ‘Administrative officers at the ministry write at least 40 paragraphs in a summery whereas it can be done within two paragraphs.’
   ‘Besides’, he said, ‘monitoring of any file on a school in a remote area should not be done from the ministry. Such monitoring increases the mad rush at the ministry.’
   ‘The education ministry faces a severe traffic jam when there is a monthly annual development meeting,’ he said. ‘As many as 70 project directors, each accompanied by at least two officials, turn up for the meetings.’
   Milan says he hardly sees any justification for such meetings.

While much of urban Thailand has celebrated the political demise of the prime minister, Thaksin Shinawatra, voters in his northern home province are still behind their man.
   ‘I’m really sorry he stepped down,’ said Tassanee Samta, a chicken vendor in a market outside the main northern city of Chiang Mai, praising Thaksin for cheap health insurance and rural loan schemes to help the poor.
   The populist Thaksin, a business tycoon and self-styled ‘CEO prime minister,’ on Tuesday stunned the nation when he said he would step aside despite winning a third term in weekend elections.
   While Thaksin had affronted Bangkok’s elite by allegedly mixing politics and business, eroding democratic institutions and stifling media freedom, he lavished money and infrastructure projects on the countryside.
   A common Bangkok view is that Thaksin exploited the uneducated rural masses to cement support for his Thai Rak Thai party.
   ‘We each have our own reasons for or against Thaksin but I’ll still take his side,’ Tassanee said.
   ‘I don’t like people to put pressure on him, especially because he’s from the north, which loves him.’
   Loyalty runs deep in the region for Thaksin, who is depicted here on campaign posters that show him in farmyard settings.
   ‘I voted for the TRT because I’m from the north,’ said Supa Supasil, a shop owner in the Ban Tawai woodcraft village, which has benefited from a national product promotion and distribution scheme Thaksin created.
   ‘After the 1997 economic collapse, Thaksin got businesses motivated,’ said the 59-year-old, adding that the government had also upgraded the local roads she uses daily to her village, a 40-minute drive away.
   It wasn’t just cash and roads that made Thaksin popular here.
   ‘I voted for Thaksin because I like his policies,’ said snack vendor Anongsak Tantrakool. ‘My favourite is the anti-drugs one,’ he added, referring to a 2003 police crackdown on drug dealers that claimed over 2,000 lives.
   The wave of extra-judicial killings was condemned by human rights groups but proved wildly popular in a country that has been ravaged by methamphetamines known locally as ya ba or ‘crazy drug’.
   In Thaksin’s hometown of Sam Kamphaeng, sales assistant Janita Anpunya said she voted for the TRT because she likes its modernisation policies.

Cambodia’s prime minister Hun Sen said Friday he was sorry to see his Thai counterpart step aside, but understood it was a compromise made for the good of the nation.
   ‘I think the Thai people are smart enough to solve their own problems, but actually, we regret the resignation of Thaksin Shinawatra, who is my good partner,’ Hun Sen told reporters.
   The two premiers are close allies, and Hun Sen has frequently followed Thaksin’s lead, most notably on Thailand’s social order crackdown four years ago which resulted in the closure of karaoke parlours in Cambodia’s capital.

At least 79 people were killed and 164 wounded in three suicide blasts as worshippers were leaving a Shia mosque in the Iraqi capital after weekly Friday prayers, state television said quoting the health ministry.
   Earlier, an Iraqi health ministry official told the news agency that at least 69 people had died and 130 were wounded in the blasts.
   The blasts took place outside the Baratha mosque in northern Baghdad, whose imam, or prayer leader, Sheikh Jalaluddin al-Saghir, is an MP with the Shia United Iraqi Alliance, the largest parliament bloc.
   Immediately after the attack, Iraqi authorities appealed on state television for blood donations.
   ‘At least two of the bombers were dressed as women and blew themselves up inside the mosque complex,’ Saghir, a security official, told the news agency, adding that 138 were wounded in the attacks.
   Saghir said the ‘preliminary investigation shows that a woman, or a man dressed as a woman, managed to reach the security post of the female section, where the suicide bomber blew himself up causing panic and a rush by people to get out, allowing the two other terrorists to penetrate the mosque.’
   Describing the attacks to Dubai-based Al-Arabiya television, Saghir said of the other two bombers ‘one went towards my private office and one was in the mosque’s main prayer hall and they blew themselves up amid the crowds.’
   When questioned if he was the target, he added, ‘I can’t say for sure that I was a target because there have many attempts on my life before.’
   Saghir’s mosque packs thousands of worshippers every Friday. The cleric is known for his fiery sermons promulgating the rights of Iraq’s Shia majority.
   Iraqi and US military forces quickly cordoned off the entire area as dozens of pick-up trucks, ambulances and private vehicles started to ferry the victims to hospitals.
   Victims were also carried away in handcarts and blankets, as men, beating their chests in grief, searched for relatives who had attended the prayers at the mosque.
   Patches of blood and dozens of shoes were left scattered outside the mosque where the bombers blew themselves up in the midst of the fleeing worshippers.
   The triple attack followed a car bombing on Thursday that killed 10 people in the Shia shrine city of Najaf and came amid political deadlock as the prime minister, Ibrahim Jaafari, refused pressure to step down.
   Hundreds died in the ensuing tit-for-tat killings between the two religious groups, raising fears of civil war.
   In Thursday’s attack in Najaf, a car bomb exploded close to the revered Imam Ali shrine and near the offices of senior cleric Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani and radical Shia cleric Moqtada al-Sadr.
   In his Friday sermon, radical Shia cleric Moqtada Sadr blamed the US forces for Thursday’s Najaf bombing.
   ‘This is not the first time that the occupation forces and their death squads have resorted to killings,’ the cleric said referring to the Najaf bombing.

The Awami League president, Sheikh Hasina, on Friday asked her party leaders to intensify the ongoing street agitations and launch a vigorous campaign against militancy ‘exposing the government’s role’ in the rise of the menace.
   Besides, she directed the party leaders to campaign more vigorously for international investigations of militancy issues so that the government was compelled to do so.
    Hasina, also the leader of the opposition in the parliament, made the directives at the party’s central working committee meeting at her Dhanmondi office.
   She told the party leaders to make the people understand that the militants were the creation of the ruling BNP-Jamaat alliance, and that’s why the government would not take any effective steps against them.
   As part of the plan to strengthen the ongoing anti-government movement, Hasina directed the leaders and activists to make successful the April 19 sit-in demonstration in front of the Prime Minister’s Office.
   The meeting with Sheikh Hasina in the chair announced countrywide demonstrations on April 12 in protest against the killings of villagers in an attack by the BNP activists at Kansat in Chapainawabganj Thursday.
   Besides, the meeting decided to take out a procession welcoming the Bengali new year on April 14 and announced various programmes to observe the Mujibnagar Day on April 17 marking the formation of the Bangladesh government in exile in 1971.
   Emerging from the meeting, the acting general secretary of the AL, Obaidul Kader said that the party working committee had once again demanded an international inquiry into the militancy issues and effective steps against the menace.
   Hasina said the government would not be allowed to hold election without implementing the opposition’s reforms proposal.

Judas Iscariot, vilified as Christ’s betrayer, acted at Jesus’ request in turning him over to the authorities who crucified him, according to a 1,700-year-old copy of the ‘Gospel of Judas’ unveiled on Thursday.
   In an alternative view to traditional Christian teaching, the Judas gospel shows the reviled disciple as the only one in Jesus’ inner circle who understood his desire to shed his earthly body.
   ‘He’s the good guy in this portrayal,’ said Bart Ehrman, a religion professor at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. ‘He’s the only apostle who understands Jesus.’
   The Judas gospel’s introduction says it is ‘the secret account of the revelation that Jesus spoke in conversation with Judas Iscariot.’ Later, it quotes Jesus as saying to Judas, ‘You will exceed all of them (the other disciples) for you will sacrifice the man who clothes me.’
   ‘The idea in this gospel is that Jesus, like all of us, is a trapped spirit, who is trapped in a material body,’ Ehrman said. ‘And salvation comes when we escape the materiality of our existence, and Judas is the one who makes it possible for him to escape by allowing for his body to be killed.’
   Rev Donald Senior, president of Catholic Theological Union in Chicago, said the document revealed the diversity and vitality in early Christianity.
   ‘The question becomes ... does this tradition, this alternative story, if you like, in the gospel of Judas have a claim that in some sense is equal to the rival claim of the gospel tradition?’ Senior said.
   It is not known who wrote the Judas gospel. The copy unveiled on Thursday is of a document mentioned critically in the year 180 in a treatise called ‘Against Heresies,’ written by Irenaeus, bishop of Lyon in what was then Roman Gaul. It spoke out against those whose views about Jesus differed from those of the mainstream Christian Church.
   In the Bible’s New Testament, Judas is portrayed as the quintessential traitor, accepting 30 pieces of silver to betray Jesus by identifying him to Roman soldiers. The biblical Gospel of St Matthew says Judas quickly regretted his treachery, returned the silver and hanged himself.
   The New Testament contains four Gospels—of Matthew, Mark, Luke and John—but many more so-called apocryphal gospels were written in the first centuries after Christ’s death, attributed to such disciples as Thomas and Philip and to his female follower Mary Magdalene.
   Ehrman, Senior and other experts on Christianity spoke at a briefing at the National Geographic Society, which unveiled a translation of the Judas gospel and which helped authenticate, preserve and translate the document.
   The leather-bound copy of the gospel was written in Coptic script on both sides of 13 sheets of papyrus, and spent most of the past 1,700 years hidden in a cavern in the Egyptian desert, said Terry Garcia of the National Geographic Society.
   This document was probably copied from the original Greek manuscript around the year 300, Garcia said. Discovered in the 1970s near Minya, Egypt, the volume—including the gospel and other documents—was sold to an Egyptian antiquities dealer in 1978.
   The dealer offered it for sale without success, and eventually locked it in a bank safe deposit box in Hicksville, New York, for 16 years, which hastened its decay. In images displayed at the briefing, the papyrus looked like brown, dry autumn leaves.
   Garcia said it had crumbled into more than 1,000 pieces.
   In 2001, the Maecenas Foundation for Ancient Art in Switzerland began an effort to transcribe and translate the volume from the Coptic. In the next years, scientific tests—including radiocarbon dating, ink analysis and multispectral imaging—showed the document was copied down around 300.
   The Judas gospel is being published in book form by National Geographic and pages from the papyrus manuscript will be on display at the society’s museum in Washington starting on Friday. The manuscript will ultimately be housed at the Coptic Museum in Cairo.

India is considering alternative routes for a proposed gas pipeline from Myanmar that would bypass Bangladesh because of Dhaka’s reservations about the venture, Indian officials said Thursday.
   The new route being considered runs through the north-eastern Indian state of Tripura to the eastern city of Patna, and does not touch Bangladeshi territory, an oil ministry official told the news agency.
   ‘The new route is much more expensive for India. But then if Bangladesh does not want to be part of this project, we have to think of alternatives,’ he said.
   The state-run Gas Authority of India Limited has commissioned a private firm to conduct a feasibility study on the new pipeline route, due to be finished next month, he said.
   Another senior government official said India ‘would like to have Bangladesh on board. But they seem to be negative.’
   The decision follows several rounds of talks between officials from India, Bangladesh and Myanmar on the three-billion-dollar pipeline, which was to run from Myanmar to India’s eastern city of Kolkata via Bangladesh.
   In September, Dhaka said a deal had not emerged because India would not agree to link the pipeline deal to three trade-related concessions sought by Bangladesh.
   Dhaka said it wanted New Delhi to agree to road transit for Bangladeshi goods through India for trade with Nepal, steps to narrow a trade deficit which now favours India, and to be allowed to import hydro-electric power from Nepal and Bhutan.
   The project was expected to yield 600 million dollars in investment for Bangladesh, besides annual charges and financial benefits to its energy firms.
   India, which imports 70 per cent of its energy needs, has been seeking new supplies of oil and gas from several countries including a natural gas pipeline from Iran via Pakistan.

The European Union announced Friday the suspension of direct funding to the Hamas-led Palestinian Authority, upping pressure on the militant group to renounce violence and recognise Israel.
   But Hamas immediately rebuffed the move and vowed not to surrender to ‘blackmail’ from the European bloc, the biggest donor of aid to the cash-strapped Palestinians.
   The European Commission, which announced the suspension, said it expects EU foreign ministers to discuss what to do next at regular talks in Luxembourg next Monday.
   ‘For the time being there are no payments to or through the Palestinian Authority,’ said Emma Udwin, a spokeswoman for EU external relations commissioner Benita Ferrero-Waldner.

More than 200 ethnic minority community people of three Mahalchari villages, who had taken shelter in the Maischari Primary School after Monday’s clash with settlers, did not return to their houses till Thursday.
   They were passing their days half-fed or unfed, but did not dare to return to their houses at Chaiprue Karbaripara, Noapara and Joysenpara fearing further attacks by the settlers.
   The routine religious activities of the ethnic minorities in the troubled villages did not take place as neither any priest nor any disciple was found at the places of religious activities.
   Endhaka Thera, principal of the Dharma Rakhita Buddha Bihar at Chaprue Karbaripara, and his eight disciples were among those who have taken shelter in the school after Monday’s trouble that left at least 30 people injured.
   Endhaka said the principal of Buddha Shishu Ghar, Sumana Mahathera, had gone into hiding after being assaulted by the settlers.
   Sumana was also the witness of the violation two young girls at Chaiprue Karbaripara — Krojanya Marma, 18, and Thoaimanjya Marma, 19 — who were undergoing treatment at Khagrachari Sadar Hospital.
   One Yghay Marma of Maischhari told New Age that he had collected 42 kilograms of rice from the nearby villages to stand besides the almost unfed people.
   The ethnic minority community people claimed that the settlers not only ransacked their houses but also looted all valuables in their houses, and urged the authorities concerned to create such an environment so that they could go to their homes.
   The deputy commissioner, Humayun Kabir, however, claimed the entire incident a routine work by the ethnic minorities to draw attention of the donors to get assistance.

Four people were killed and over 235 others injured when nor’wester swept over 15 villages in Kamarkhand and Kazipur upazilas under Sirajganj within a span of 18 hours on Friday.
   Of the deaths, three were reported from Kazipur and one from Kamarkand.
   In Kazipur, a powerful storm lashed seven villages at about 6:10pm killing three people and injuring 200 others, local sources said.
   Over 500 thatched houses collapsed and a large number of trees and electric poles uprooted during the storm that continued for 10 minutes.
   In Kamarkand, a woman identified as Karuna Begum, 25, was killed when their house collapsed during the storm at about 1:00am.
   At least 35 people were also injured in house collapse in Khamar Baradhul, Joyen Baradhul, Chandipur, Bagbari, Konabari, Balukol, Daraipur and Kashiyahata villages of the upazila.