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The government will provide all out security and utility supports to all the mandaps in the country for peaceful celebration of Durga Puja, the greatest religious festival of the Hindu community, scheduled to begin on September 28.
   The Dhaka mayor, Sadeque Hossain Khoka, and the state minister for home, Lutfozzaman Babar, said this at a meeting with the leaders of the puja mandaps and panchayet committees of Hindus at Nagar Bhaban.
   Babar, the special guest at the meeting, said RAB, BDR, policemen and ansar would be deployed at all puja mandaps across the country to maintain law and order and ensure security at the puja mandaps across the country.
   ‘We are closely monitoring the event. If any untoward incident occurs at any puja mandaps we will go for prompt action,’ he said.
   Due to the tight security, the number of puja mandaps is increasing every year, he said, adding that his ministry had got a list of 20,000 puja mandaps across the country so far and the figure might be 25,000.
   Khoka said the home ministry would set up a control room for the puja so that one could inform of the untoward situation, if any, to the control room for immediate action.
   Besides, the corporation will also set up another control room to provide the puja mandaps with supports relating to utility services like power and water supply and garbage cleaning.
   He asked the puja celebration committees to contact with the control rooms in case of emergency and the list of puja mandaps in Dhaka would be given to the Dhaka Electric Supply Authority for uninterrupted power supply to the mandaps during the puja celebrations.
   Both Khoka and Babar, however, urged the puja celebration committees to keep alternative arrangements like generator for their puja mandaps.
   Khoka said each puja mandaps in the Dhaka city would receive Tk 5,000 as grant from the corporation to celebrate the puja.
   The number of puja mandaps in the city is so far 156 and it is likely to be increased, according to a puja celebration committee leader.
   The state minister for water resources, Goutam Chakrabarti, also attended the meeting as special guest. Major General (Retired) CR Dutta, one of the 11 sector commanders during the war of independence, was also present.
   Bangladesh holds a thousand-year-old tradition of communal peace and harmony among the Muslims, Hindu and people of other communities, Goutam said.
   ‘There is no risky temple or puja mandap in the country as celebration of the Durga Puja has already become a national festival with a large number of Muslims visiting the mandaps alongside the Hindus,’ Goutam said.
   Senior officials of the corporation, Dhaka Metropolitan Police, RAB, DESA, Dhaka district administration, ward commissioners, puja mandap leaders, panchayet committee leaders and puja celebration committee leaders were present at the meeting.

The Sylhet district administration has taken stringent security measures to ensure peaceful observance of the Durga Puja and maintain law and order during Ramadan.
   More than 4,000 members of the police, Rapid Action Battalion and Ansar will be deployed in the city and its adjacent areas during Durga Puja, the biggest festival of the Hindu community, which will begin on September 28, and the ongoing Ramadan to keep law and order situation, sources in the Sylhet police administration said.
   The puja organising committee members said preparation for Durga Puja had been completed at a total of 468 temples across the district and at 46 temples in the city this year, said the sources concerned.
   The Sylhet acting superintendent of police, Nisharul Arif, told New Age on Monday 12 special teams of police would be patrolling across the city everyday during Durga Puja. Besides, six to seven teams of the detective police will be active during the puja, he added.
   The law enforcers will use metal detectors at entrances to temples in the city to check any untoward incident, said the sources.
   ‘All possible measures on behalf of the police administration will be taken to let the people of the Hindu community to observe their biggest religious festival in safe environment,’ Arif said.
   Major Sibbir Ahmed, second-in-command of the RAB-9 headquarters in the city, told New Age that members of the intelligence wings of the battalion had already started their observation on the occasion of Durga Puja.
   The Sylhet district police have met with the Puja Organising Council on Sunday to discuss the issue while senior police officials and leaders of the organising committee were present, sources said.

Twenty-one mobile courts conducted anti-adulteration and price control drives in the city on Monday although the Prime Minister’s Office ordered for drives through 35 courts.
   Lack of manpower like magistrates and inspectors was the reason for the fewer number of mobile courts’ operations, home ministry sources said. 0
   The amount in fines realised Monday was nominal, it has been learnt.
   The government has already directed the divisional commissioners concerned to take steps to introduce such mobile courts in the divisional cities.
   The mobile courts will mainly work round the clock in the capital city during Ramadan to conduct drives against adulteration of food items, control law and order and keep the prices of commodities stable. The courts will fine and penalise those found violating laws in this regard.
   Several magistrates of the mobile courts on Monday told the news agency that they faced serious problems as the inspectors of the Dhaka City Corporation, BSTI and BRTA did not turn up resulting in realisation of very nominal amount in fines.

The 60-megawatt power plant of Khulna Bidyut Kendra is yet to resume generation even two months and twenty days after the closure resulting in frequent power outages in the region.
   Set up at Goalpara in the Khulna city in 1973, the power plant tripped on July 5 due to mechanical glitches, sources in the plant said.
   The plant also went out of order in 1997 and resumed the production in August 1999 after overhauling for about two years. Earlier, it went out of order several times for short periods and resumed the production after repair by the local experts.
   Meanwhile, the plant authorities and PDB officials have had several meetings, but they have yet to reach any decision to repair the machine, the sources said.
   The authorities concerned failed to make decision about whether the machine would be repaired by foreign experts in the country or abroad.
   The repair works may take about six months, the sources said adding that if the decision is not taken soon, the power generation from the plant will be delayed further.
   Following the closure, about two hundred employees of the plant have been passing their times idly at their office.
   A PDB official told New Age on Monday that they would immediately take steps to repair the machine. ‘We have already informed the high officials of the incident.’

Students of four departments under Agriculture Faculty of the Rajshahi University Monday staged a two-hour sit-in demonstration in front of administrative building on the campus to press their seven-point charter of demands.
   During the sit-in, the administrative activities of university came to a halt and agitators chanted various anti-administration slogans.
   Campus sources said several hundred students of four departments—Genetics and Breeding, Agronomy and Agriculture, Fisheries and Animal Husbandry and Veterinary Science—been carrying out agitation programmes for to push for the demands that include additional classes and seminar rooms, transport facilities and faculty scholarships.
   The students threatened to call an indefinite period strike if their demands were not met within October 3.
   The students later met with the RU vice-chancellor, Professor Altaf Hossain, at his office and discussed their demands.
   The movement council convener, Tajmilur Rahman, told newsman that RU VC assured them to meet their demands.

The Rajshahi police Monday morning recovered the body of a Rajshahi university employee near the university railway station.
   The employee, Ali Hossain, is a peon of the university central library.
   The Boalia police said they found the right leg of Ali under a railway culvert and his nude body 20 metres off the spot. The body was sent to the RMCH morgue for autopsy.
   Family members of Ali said at around 3:00am Ali was found missing in his residence when his sister went to call him for having sahri.
   The police said they recovered an umbrella, torchlight, some bidi with cannabis and fishing nets under the culvert.
   Family members of Ali suspect that he might have been killed by his opponents from the 546 employees whose appointments have remained suspended. They, however, failed to identify the killers.
   Another source said Ali’s wife had extra-marital relation with a university employee. The killing might have a link to this matter.
   The university proctor, Enamul Haque, and employees’ leaders visited the spot and expressed deep shock for the killing.

Kitabi occasionally supplies housemaids to the Dhaka city’s rising middle class families in Dhanmondi area in exchange of money. The elderly woman herself, along with her daughter-in-law Asma, serves in a number of residences. Now staying in a makeshift house near Panthapath Road, they have come from Mymensingh district to earn bread and butter for themselves.
   Embracing a life in dirty slums beside a posh shopping mall, many women of this category only live from hand to mouth, but uncertainty in accessing food is part of their regular stresses and strains.
   In the process of suffering, Asma’s fertility has fallen to such a level that she has hardly any chance of becoming a mother. Her rickshaw-puller husband is not in a position to bear the costs of her required treatment. In pursuit of living, Kitabi bothers least about the diseases she carries. Their agonies know no bound. Yet, Kitabi helps the poverty-ridden women in getting a much-needed job with dining facilities.
   ‘We had suffered for want of food and clothing in Mymensingh. Now food is available wherever we work. But there is no guarantee that we will remain fully fed all the time,’ said an 11-year-old Roksana’s grandmother, who declined to name herself because of an old sense of taboo about naming an old woman. She came to Dhaka many years ago and sometimes visits Mymensingh but cannot afford to stay there due to the curse of poverty. It is poverty which compelled 13-year-old Jhuma to digest beating by her master at a Kathalbagan house. It is that poverty which had pushed minors like Roksana to look for a job as domestic help at an apartment in Green Road.
   However, this influx of rural poor, women in particular, into the urban slums misses out the government’s programmes on providing social safety-net and income generation, officials of the ministries of finance and food and disaster management admitted to New Age.
   Programmes such as seasonal unemployment reduction fund, special fund for the employment of the hardcore poor and micro-credit funds created under Rural Development and Cooperatives Division, Ministry of Fisheries and Livestock, Ministry of Youth and Sports, Ministry of Liberation War Affairs and Ministry of Women and Children Affairs failed to capture the poor before and after their migration to the cities.
   ‘We have programmes for the rural poor but we are yet to cover the urban poor living in the slums. We have scope of making interventions in time of emergencies,’ an official of the Ministry of Food and Disaster Management said.
   Three major objectives of the government’s recently adopted Food Policy are to ensure uninterrupted supply of adequate, safe and nutritious food for all citizens, to improve access to food by raising purchasing capacity of people and focus on adequate nutrition especially for women and children.
   In a country of 140 million population, official estimate valid until 2004 shows, the percentage of people living below the poverty line still stands at over 40, of which 18.7 per cent are hardcore poor, despite coverage by the programmes run by the government and non-government organisations. Of the estimated total national labour force of 44.3 million, about 9.8 million are women who are more vulnerable to food insecurity inherent with lack of financial ability.
   Also, Bangladesh, which suffered a famine in 1974, has though tripled its food production since independence the shortfall in recent years of food grains has been recorded at a range of 30 lakh tonnes, leaving many people exposed to malnutrition, if not starvation, due to rising cost of food items that often outpaces the people’s average purchasing capacity, an official of the Ministry of Agriculture said.
   The Food Policy explained that the issue of food insecurity in the doldrums of rural economy is directly linked to food grain production, population growth and depletion of farmland. The arable land declines at a rate of one per cent per year and poverty reduction rate is 1.8 per cent, slightly higher than the population growth at 1.43 per cent.
   ‘The aforesaid symptoms in the existing poverty scenario have further complicated the whole perspective of national food security,’ the policy said of the food security to which the government of Bangladesh is committed in conformity with international definition.
   Food programmes such as rural infrastructure maintenance programme, food for works programme, gratuitous relief, vulnerable group feeding and vulnerable group development that have long been carried out by the Ministry of Food and Disaster Management are mainly targeted at meeting emergencies.
   However, the government also felt that even mere contingency food planning for combating monga, a seasonal unemployment which causes famine-like situation in the northern Bangladesh, could not solve the problem permanently and, accordingly, programmes focusing on job-creation are being appreciated nowadays.
   The food ministry officials, too, acknowledged that there was a missing link between poverty-related exodus of rural people leading to mushrooming of urban slums and creation of employment opportunities aimed at alleviating poverty and enabling them to meet food and nutrition needs. If due relevance can be pointed out in the near future, the government may take up programmes as part of its declared policy to ensure food security for all citizens, the officials added.
   Unless an innovative programme is undertaken at the earliest, uncertainty in availing of food in the lives of many like Kitabi, Asma, Roksana, Jhuma and the old unnamed woman will only prolong and they will continue to suffer from hunger by rotation.

A housewife sustained severe burn injuries as her husband allegedly threw acid on her at their residence in the city’s Golapbagh area Sunday night.
   The victim, Shanta, 25, told journalists that her husband Mohammad Habib had a quarrel with her at night over fetching Tk 1 lakh from her parents. Habib later went outside and returned to the house after few minutes when Shanta went to the kitchen for cooking at about 9:00pm.
   ‘As I was busy cooking, Habib threw something on me resulting in irritations to my face, hands and eyes,’ she said. ‘I cried out for help, but Habib ran away from the house.’

One person was killed and 18 people were injured, two of them seriously, as a bus plunged into a ditch at Dakkhin Surma in the city on Monday.
   Witnesses said the Sylhet city-bound minibus from Fenchuganj plunged into the ditch at Lalmatiya in Dakkhin Surma, killing Fazlur Rahman Chowdhury, 50, of village Dowlatpur in Golapganj upazila on the spot.
   The injured were admitted to Sylhet Osmani Medical College Hospital. Of them, condition of two persons was stated critical.

Slight to moderate rain or thunder showers accompanied by temporary gusty wind is likely at a few places over the Rajshahi, Dhaka, Khulna and Sylhet divisions and at one or two places over the Barisal and Chittagong divisions till 6:00pm today, said the Met Office in a forecast on Monday.
   Day temperature may rise by 1 to 3 degrees Celsius. The highest temperature on Monday, 33.5 degrees Celsius, was recorded in Rangamati and the lowest, 23.2 degrees Celsius, at Saidpur.
   The sun sets in the capital city today at 5:51pm and rises on Wednesday at 5:49pm.

Expulsion of DU student withdrawn
The Dhaka University authorities have withdrawn the expulsion order of Faisal Ahmed, an MA student of the philosophy. The authorities inadvertently expelled Faisal along with three other students for their alleged involvement in the attack on the university journalists on September 16 at Madhu’s canteen. The university expelled Faisal considering him as the fourth year (honours) student of the department of the university, a press release said.
— BSS

Workshop on PR concludes
A two-day training workshop on public relations concluded in the PIB conference room in Dhaka Saturday. The Press Institute of Bangladesh and the Bangladesh Public Relations Association jointly organised the workshop. A total of 25 public relation professionals from different government, semi-government, autonomous and private organisations attended the workshop, said a press release. The PIB chairman, Sadeq Khan, handed over the certificates to the participants as chief guest in a simple ceremony.
— UNB