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The Bangladesh Telegraph and Telephone Board has formulated a policy to facilitate setting up of international call centres in Bangladesh, a booming business now mostly captured in South Asia by Indian companies.
   ‘The policy aims to facilitate development of infrastructure for the call centre business utilising the high bandwidth capacity of the SEA-ME-WE-4 submarine cable network, which is expected to generate employment and foreign exchange earnings significantly,’ said a top BTTB official on Thursday.
   A call centre is a centralised office used for the purpose of receiving and transmitting a large volume of requests by telephone.
   The centre is operated by a company to administer incoming product support or information inquiries from customers. Outgoing calls for telemarketing, clientele, and debt collection are also made.
   The call centre policy said that the telephone board will provide connectivity for establishment of call centres in the form of international private leased circuit (IPLC).
   IPLC is a dedicated secure digital point to point private connection between two locations in two different countries that allows transmission of data, large internet packets, real-time video applications like video conferencing and such other information communication service.
   The connectivity will be provided to companies or joint venture companies registered or formed under Bangladesh law and having permission to set up call centres from appropriate authorities on non-exclusive basis, said the policy.
   The policy said that for international call centres, bandwidth is available on half circuit and full circuit basis. In the case of half circuit, the call centre will arrange the far end half circuit through the foreign operator.
   No termination or connectivity will be allowed to or from domestic PSTN, cellular, data or any other type of network to avoid bypassing voice traffic illegally, said the policy.
   An operator is not permitted to interconnect any domestic call centre with an international call centre, where BTTB provides connectivity, the policy noted.
   Both inbound and outbound calls are permitted only from international call centres and the telephone board will not allow any interconnectivity at the call centre site.
   The policy said that the BTTB will have the right to apply monitoring facility with digital recording system over any service extending to call centres.
   ‘The BTTB will have the right of unrestricted access for monitoring and inspection of the premises or the call centre operator, without prior notice or delay, for obtaining data or current configuration of the instrument installed in the call centre,’ said the policy.
   The policy also said that authorised government law enforcing agencies will have the right to intercept the data originated and terminated at the call centres for the purpose of analysis and scrutiny.

The participants at roundtable on Friday said that the BNP-led alliance government was destroying the country’s education system through blatant partisan activities including recruitments in educational institutions from primary to university level.
   The education and human resources development sub-committee of the Awami League organised the seminar at the National Press Club in the morning. Political leaders, academics and teachers’ representatives took part in the discussion.
   They also placed a set of recommendations for immediate solution to the problems of the teachers, especially their salary structure and introduction of a unified primary education system.
   ‘The ruling alliance has expanded its partisan politics to all educational institutes from primary to university level pushing the education system to the brink of destruction,’ former vice-chancellor of the Dhaka University, Professor AK Azad Chowdhury, told the roundtable on ‘crisis in primary education and its solution’.
   The education and human resources development secretary of the opposition Awami League, Nurul Islam Nahid, presented the keynote paper in which he gave the details of various irregularities and corruption of the government in the last four and a half years.
   The senior joint general secretary of the AL, Obaidul Kader, Professor AAMS Arefin Siddique and Professor Kazi Faruk Ahmed took part in the discussion presided over by AK Azad Chowdhury. The dean of social science faculty of the Dhaka University, Professor Harun-ur-Rashid, was the moderator.
   Terming primary and mass education the foundation of education system, the speakers urged the government to take special measures to address the grievances of teachers and remove disparity to save primary and mass education. They said the teachers should not be dragged into politics.
   Expressing ‘deep concern’ over the situation in the country’s education sector, they also accused the government of not taking any initiatives during its tenure for development of primary and mass education.
   They urged the leaders of the main opposition AL to announce specific policies for development of the education sector.
   The key speaker in his paper placed a 26-point recommendation to restore congenial atmosphere in the education sector.
   The other demands include immediate solution to the crisis prevailing in the primary education sector, expansion of primary education up to class eight, reducing discrimination in the quality of teaching between urban and rural areas, taking specific measures to ensure education for the 45 ethnic communities and increasing facilities for teachers to attract brilliant students to the profession.

Non-government primary school teachers on Friday announced that they would close down all schools across the country and stage a sit-in at Muktangon in Dhaka on August 2 if their one-point demand for job nationalisation was not accepted by August 1.
   A number of teachers under the banner of Bangladesh Registered Non-government Primary Teachers’ Association at a press conference announced the programme and declared their former president, M Shamsul Alam ‘unwanted’ in the association.
   ‘We had started a fast unto death on May 28 at Muktangon under the leadership of Shamsul Alam to push the one-point demand. But he persuaded us into breaking the fast after Haris Chowdhury, the political adviser to the prime minister, had offered talks on June 1,’ said the new president of the association, Shahidul Islam Khan.
   ‘Harris came to Muktangan and made us break the fast offering us soft drinks, and assured us that the government would sit with the teachers to find out a solution. But most of the fasting teachers were doubtful about the sincerity of the government and chanted slogans demanding that the prime minister should make an announcement nationalising our jobs,’ he added.
   ‘Instead of job nationalisation, Harris offered us pay rise during talks at the Prime Minister’s Office and we declined the offer at once,’ he said adding: ‘we had chanted slogans on the premises of the PMO and decided to resume our movement.’
   ‘Our former leader, Shamsul Alam, perhaps had an underhand deal with the government high-ups and persuaded us into breaking the fast, but the decision proved to be suicidal,’ said M Abdur Rahman Bacchu, the secretary general of the association.
   There are about 75,948 teachers in 19,380 non-government schools.
   Talking to New Age on Friday, Shamsul Alam admitted that a new faction had been created in the association. ‘If they resume agitation, I would not be a party to it.’
   Meanwhile, the non-stop strike enforced by different organisations of non-government teachers and employees since July 6 to push their various demands, was continuing in most non-govenment educational institutions across the country.
   All kinds of examinations and admission process in colleges have, however, been kept out of the purview of the strike.
   Over five lakh teachers and employees of about 30,000 high schools, colleges and madrassahs are on strike, as the government has not allocated sufficient funds in the budget to meet their demands.
   The demands include: a 10 per cent increase in the government’s share of their salary, increase in house rent and medical allowance, full festival allowance, and implementation of the recommendations of the UNESCO and the ILO.
   The government pays 90 per cent of the salaries of the teachers and employees of the non-government educational institutions.
   Although teachers and employees have been on strike separately, their demands are similar.
   The organisations are: the Teachers and Employees’ United Alliance led by Selim Bhuiyan, the Bangladesh Teachers’ and Employees’ Unity Council convened by MA Awal Siddiqui, the Awami League-backed National Front of Teachers and Employees convened by Quazi Faruque and another faction of the alliance led by M Shariful Islam.

Two more suspected underground party leaders were killed during a criminal-Rapid Action Battalion gunfight at Shahapur the sadar upazila early Friday, raising the ‘crossfire’ death count to 608 since June 2004.
   The victims were identified as Kamrul Master, 60, general secretary of Purba Banglar Communist Party (ML Lal Pataka), and Abdul Latif alias Jhunu Maker, 45, commander of the party’s Pabna unit, RAB claimed.
   Kamrul was a resident of Noorpur village and an
   assistant teacher of Kashimuddin High School while Jhunu was an inhabitant of Daspara village. They were wanted in a number of criminal cases.
   According to RAB, they arrested Kamrul from Goran and Jhunu from Mirpur in Dhaka on Thursday and
   took them to Pabna for interrogation.
   Based on their statements, a RAB team took them to Sahapur where their associates opened fire on the team prompting them to retaliate.
   At one stage, the two tried to escape, but died on the spot falling in the line of crossfire, RAB claimed adding that they had seized two pipe guns and three bullets from the spot.

The Awami Jubo League has declared its Khulna city unit and the five thana and 36 ward units under it dissolved for persistent factional feuds and some irregularities.
   The central committee of the Awami League’s youth front took the decision on Thursday night, said a source.
   The dissolved thana units are Khulna Sadar, Sonadanga, Khalishpur, Daulatpur, and Khanjahan Ali.
   The source said the Jubo League central committee earlier had suspended the activities of all these units to see if it ended the intra-party conflicts. As the step failed, the central committee went for the dissolution of the problem units.
   According to Khulna Jubo League sources, they new the dissolution was coming, as the factional strife became too bitter and intense in the recent past.
   Fresh convening committees of these units will be declared very soon, they added.

The Workers Party of Bangladesh, a major component of the opposition combine led by the Awami League, will participate in the next general elections with its own symbol within the alliance.
   The party president, Rashed Khan Menon, at an election preparation meeting in the party’s central office in Dhaka on Friday said the party was ready to field candidates for 40 seats.
   The number of seats may vary after negotiation wit the alliance partners, Menon said.
   The district committee in-charge and secretaries joined the meeting, which reviewed the latest situations of the proposed 40 seats.
   The meeting also urged non-communal, democratic politics and government on the basis of 23-point charter of demands.
   Taking part in the elections without reforms of the caretaker government system and the Election Commission would be suicidal for the opposition alliance, the meeting said. The meeting also urged strong anti-government movements.
   The party’s general secretary Bimal Biswas explained the party views and positions on the elections.
   The leaders from the Dhaka division, Manoj Saha, Quamrul Ahsan, from the Chittagong division Bashirul Alam, from the Sylhet division Sekandar Ali and others took part in the discussion. Party representatives from Barisal, Khuna and Rajshahi joined in.

A trader was killed and his son injured by unidentified assailants at Tatipara in Pabna sadar upazila early Friday.
   The police and family sources said the assailants storm into the house of Sadek Mollah, 55, and hacked him to death taking to a nearby house.
   They also injured Sadek’s son Monsur Ali as he tried to resist the assailants. He was admitted to the Pabna General Hospital in a critical condition.
   The police sent the body to the Pabna General Hospital morgue for autopsy.

The leader of the opposition in parliament, Sheikh Hasina, in a statement on Friday condemned the attack on the Bogra Awami League office by the activists of Jatiyatabadi Juba Dal and Chhatra Dal.
   ‘The BNP-led alliance government has been trying to destroy the AL by launching attacks on its leaders and workers,’she said.
   At least 10 to 12 leaders and activists of the AL ,including Borgra district publicity secretary Shahirar Opel, Saru and Sattar were injured in the attack l on Thursday night, the statement said.
   She demanded immediate arrest and punishment of those involved in the attack.

Two Islamic organisations staged demonstrations in front of the Baitul Mukarram National Mosque in the city on Friday in protest against the Israeli attacks on Lebanon and Palestine.
   Soon after the juma prayers, several hundred workers of Hijbut Tahrir Bangladesh and Islamic Constituency Movement took to the streets. They chanted various slogans blasting Israel for attacks on the two Middle East countries.
   Later at protest rallies, leaders of the organisations criticised the United Nations and the USA for their controversial role in the Middle East.
   They also denounced the government and the mainstream political parties including ruling BNP and the Awami league for keeping mum on the Middle-East issue.
   They called upon the Muslim community across the world to get united against the anti-Muslim forces. They said they would continue movement until the attacks on Palestine and Lebanon as well as on the Muslim community are stopped.

The Bangladesh Rifles and the Border Security Force of India exchanged fire along Hakimpur border in Chapainawabganj early Friday.
   BDR sources said that BSF members of Ramnagar camp fired three rounds of bullet along the border at about 2:30am without any provocation. In retaliation, the BDR also fired five shots. No casualty, however, was reported, the sources said.
   At least three Bangladeshi nationals were killed and a dozen others wounded in BSF firing in the last three weeks in the district.

A power company as part of its corporate social responsibility will set up a 30-bed general hospital at Meghnaghat Power Plant in Narayanganj district in collaboration with the Diabetic Association of Bangladesh.
   Globeleq has taken up the joint venture project titled Globeleq-Ibrahim General Hospital to provide healthcare to the local community.
   Globeleq chief executive officer Torbjorn Caesar and DAB secretary general Azad Khan laid the hospital’s foundation stone on Friday.
   According to the plan, the hospital will be built on a six-bigha or 198-decimal plot at Kaliganj village near Mugrapara under Sonargaon upazila.
   Globeleq officials said the hospital would start providing medical services to the locals from January 2008 on completion of the hospital by December 2007.
   It will also run a telemedicine programme so that patients can consult and get services of leading medical specialists. There will have arrangements to shift critical patients to specialised hospitals.

Two Indian nationals were arrested from Boikari border area in Satkhira on Friday.
   Tipped off, BDR nabbed a man from Agardari Madrasah area and a woman, aged about 30, from Kaliyani in Sadar upazila for their suspicious movement.
   The arrested were being interrogated at Sadar police station.

Physicians are focusing more on monetary gains than giving healthcare services to people, said former chief adviser to caretaker government Justice Habibur Rahman on Friday.
   The tendency is prevalent not only in Bangladesh but is common even in the developed countries, he noted.
   ‘But the difference is, any patient in a developed country can get justice against doctors for negligence or irregularity, as law and its implementation are stronger there than in the developing countries like us,’ Habibur Rahman observed at an award giving ceremony.
   He was the chief guest of the function, where five eminent doctors received gold medals in recognition of their lifetime achievement in healthcare.
   The Gono Bishwabidyalay organised the event on its Savar campus to mark the eighth founding anniversary of the university.
   The former chief adviser also said the country should honour the dedicated and efficient doctors practising unselfishly to discourage the commercial trend and encourage the opposite.
   The award winner doctors are Kazi Shamsul Huq, professor of radiology, Johora Begum Kazi, professor of gynaecology, SIMG Mannan, professor of anatomy, and AK Bakhtiar Hossain, professor of surgery, of Dhaka Medical College, and Mohammad Shamsujjoha, professor of pharmacology of Chittagong Medical College.
   At the function, Samajbhittik Medical College principal Mohammad Shahidullah also handed over gold medals to Syed Abdul Majid and Kulsum Majid for scoring the highest in the MBBS examinations of the Gono Bishwabidyalay in the last two years.
   The chairman of the University Grants Commission, M Asaduzzaman, who presided over the function, in his turn, blamed the teachers too for abusing their noble profession to make fast buck.
   Most of the private universities have nothing more than the signboards, he lamented. ‘Many universities are trying to open new and modern departments in science and technology without having enough teachers and facilities,’ he mentioned.
   Award-winner doctors in their speeches said patients were increasingly going aboard for treatment only for the better care and behaviour they receive there from doctors and other hospital staff.
   They said many of their colleagues do not care about how they behave with the patients, although medical ethics and behavioural science dictate amicable and sympathetic behaviour with them.
   Students nowadays study medicine from a commercial attitude, almost forgetting the Hippocratic Oath, they added.
   Gono Bishwabidyalay vice-chancellor Abul Kashem Chowdhury and National Professor MR Khan also spoke at the ceremony followed by a cultural programme.

Five persons were killed and 25 others injured including a lawmaker in three road accidents in Chittagong, Netrakona and Gopalganj on Friday.
   Three deaths were reported from Mirsharai, two deaths and injury of 20 persons from Netrakona, while the lawmaker, M Nurul Islam of BNP, along with his four companions met with the accident in Gopalganj.
   One of the deceased of Netrakona accident was identified as bus helper Bapparaj, 16, of Challisha under Netrakona sadar and another could not be identified.
   Five of the injured—Kamrul Hussain, 38, Lipi Bhoumik, 26, Salina Begum, 40, Mahmudul Hasan, 29, and Sahnaj Begum, 25, were taken to Mymensingh Medical College Hospital. The other injured were admitted to Netrakona Sadar Hospital.
   The police and witnesses reported the bus met with the accident when it skidded off into a roadside ditch at Baghra.
   The lawmaker M Nurul Islam and his four other companions were injured in another accident at Kashiani under Kashiani upazila in Gopalganj on their way to Khulna from Dhaka.
   As their microbus reached Kashiani area at around 4:00am, one of the tires of the microbus blasted and it fell into a roadside ditch leaving lawmaker and his companions— the general secretary of BNP Khulna city unit, Nazrul Islam Monju, his wife advocate Syeda Sabiha, KCC ward Commissioner Md Moniruzzaman and the Juba Dal leader Arifuzzaman Apu injured.
   They were taken to a Khulna clinic where the doctor said MP got his collar bone broken.
   The three persons killed in an accident on Dhaka-Chittagong
   highway were identified as Imtiaj Alam Chowdhury Bappi, 30, Jahirul Alam, 32, and Shafiqul Islam, 32.
   The police and local sources said the accident took place at around 4:00am when a Dhaka-bound taxi cab hit a Chittagong-bound covered van head-on at Masternagar area of Tinrastermatha in Mirsharai.
   Sources said Imtiaj and Jahirul, two passengers of the taxicab, haddied on the spot when the cab driver Shafiqul had succumbed to his injures on the way to hospital.
   The police seized the smashed taxicab and the covered van, however, the van driver managed to escape.

Customs seized a consignment of mobile handsets, wristwatches and illegal medicines worth about Tk 7 lakh from a passenger returning from Dubai at Shah Amanat International Airport on Friday.
   Sources in the customs said they recovered 50 handsets, 541 wristwatches and 250 canisters of sex stimulants from Jamal Uddin Chowdhury, of Uttar Madersha at Hathazari in Chittagong.
   Sources said Jamal was a passenger of Flight BG 048, which reached the airport at around 1:00am.
   The customs said they had seized the goods as the passenger could not produce any document.

The main opposition Awami League will not take any decision instantly on the conditions of Bikalpadhara president Prof AQM Badruddoza Chowdhury for his party’s joining the 14-party combine.
   ‘We are not thinking about it right now,’ the AL general secretary and coordinator of the 14-party combine, Abdul Jalil, MP, told the news agency on Friday when asked if his camp would forge any unity with Bikalpadhara ahead of the next general election.
   The AL and its allies are now engaged in movement demanding reform of the caretaker government and the electoral laws, removal of the chief election commissioner and two other election commissioners, he said
   The Bikalpadhara chief at a Gonaforum programme on Thursday spelt out six-point conditions for joining the AL-led 14-party combine. The conditions include bringing the corrupt and the criminals to book within two years of forming the government if the 14-party combine voted to power.
   A top AL leader wising anonymity said although Badruddoza spoke about programme-based unity, it was nothing new to them. ‘He has said the same thing in the past to form a programme-based unity. We have been talking about a unity of all pro-liberation forces for long.’
   Another 14-party leader said, Badruddoza once made ‘Shabash Bangladesh’ that was broadcast in the television. ‘Why he is not making a documentary named Obak Bangladesh now?’

Bangladesh and India will hold their joint boundary working group meeting in Dhaka on July 16-17.
   The joint secretary-level meeting is going to be held against the backdrop of frequent skirmishes between the border guards of the two countries.
   The meeting will discuss longstanding issues of demarcating 6.5km border at Daikhata, Lathitila-Dumabari and Muhuri river, exchange of enclaves and territories in adverse possession, and construction of boundary pillars.
   The joint secretary (political) of the home ministry, Akhtar Ahmed, will lead the Bangladesh delegation while the Indian side will be led by the joint secretary of Indian external affairs ministry, Mohan Kumar.
   Dhaka has long been pressing for implementation of the Bangladesh-India land boundary agreement signed on May 16, 1974 by then prime ministers Sheikh Mujibur Rahman and Indira Gandhi.
   Although the Bangladesh government ratified the agreement through the third Amendment to Constitution on November 28, 1974, the Indian government has not yet ratified it.
   Officials here said the non-implementation of the land boundary agreement is leading to outbreak of skirmishes along the border.
   The last meeting of the joint boundary working group was held in New Delhi on March 26-27 in 2002.

Nawapara correspondent of Bangla daily Ajker Kagoj allegedly committed suicide by letting him to be crashed under the wheels of a commuter train at around 8:30am on Friday.
   He was undergoing financial crisis as he sold out his business outlet a few months ago.
   The incident took place at Nawapara industrial area.
   He left behind his father, mother and a sister.
   He started journalism about 15 years ago and carried out many development and crime reports for several dailies and weeklies. His funeral was held at Nawapara crematory at noon where Nawapara municipal chairman Enamul Haq Babul, journalists’ leader Saifur Rahman Saif and local elites were present.