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The council of advisers has approved in principle an Election Commission proposal for separating its secretariat from the prime minister’s office and asked the law ministry to place a draft of an ordinance in this regard.
   Official sources said the council at its regular meeting on Saturday directed the ministry of law to prepare and place a draft ordinance for establishing an independent secretariat of the Election Commission.
   The interim government took the decision following a proposal sent by the EC on June 7 for separating its secretariat from the prime minister’s office [now chief adviser’s office] for ensuring the commission’s financial and administrative independence.
   It was suggested that the EC secretariat should be made independent by amending the rules of business as amendments to the Constitution could not be made now in absence of parliament.
   Members of the advisory council attended the meeting chaired by the chief adviser, Fakhruddin Ahmed, at his office. Cabinet secretary and secretaries to the ministries concerned were present.
   If the proposed ordinance is promulgated, the EC will not have to depend on the government for funds, a commission official said adding that the government would sanction block allocation as per the requirement of the EC while formulating the budget.
   The EC will also be able to take necessary decisions to extend its reach to the upazila level and appoint officials of its own choice without consulting the government or seeking its approval.
   The EC, after consultation with some constitution experts, found the ways to free the commission secretariat from the executive’s control by changing the rules of business through promulgation of an ordinance.
    In Saturday’s meeting, the council of advisers also approved the draft Bangladesh Biman Corporation (Amendment) Ordinance 2007 to convert Bangladesh Biman Corporation to a public limited company (PLC) for its commercialisation, preventing mismanagement and trimming its manpower structure.
   Following the reform, the national flag carrier will be running under the nomenclature of ‘Bangladesh Airlines Limited’ company.
   The meeting asked the ministry concerned to do the scrutiny and place the draft of Memorandum of Association and Articles of Association of ‘The Bangladesh Airlines Limited’ before the council of advisers.

The contributions of agriculture and service sectors to the country’s gross domestic product are on the decline, with manufacturing sector picking up gradually, officials statistics showed.
   Service sector still remains the biggest contributor to the economic growth, but its share may see slight decline in the current fiscal year ending on June 30.
   Agriculture is estimated to account for 21.11 per cent of the GDP in 2006-07 fiscal year, less by 0.73 per cent from its contribution in the previous fiscal, according to the Bangladesh Economic Review 2007.
   Sterility in boro rice and bird flu in poultry firms were the major reasons for the decline in GDP share of agriculture, the review elaborated.
   The prime sector of the economy includes sub sectors like crops and vegetables, livestock, forestry and fisheries.
   The contribution of crops and vegetables decreased to 1.92 per cent of GDP from 5.03 per cent and that of livestock dropped to 5.85 per cent from 6.15 per cent of the year before.
   The share of service sector in the economy is projected to fall slightly to 49.12 per cent in 2006-07 fiscal year from 49.13 per cent of the year before, 49.41 per cent in 2004-05 and 49.23 per cent in 2003-04 fiscal years.
   Sub-sectors like hotel and restaurant, retail and wholesale marketing, transport, financial sector, real estate, public administration, education, health and community activities are some of the major areas, which are included in the service sector.
   Manufacturing sector is projected to have a bigger role in the economic growth in 2006-07, with its share rising to 17.79 per cent from 17.08 in the previous fiscal year, the review mentioned.
   Large and medium enterprises would account for 12.68 per cent while small industries would share 5.11 per cent.
   Economists said the GDP contribution and growth of agricultural sector must be enhanced for ensuring adequate farm production to reduce import dependence, and employment generation, since farm sector still remains the biggest rural employer.
   They also felt that agriculture sector, both crop and non-crop sub sectors, need to have more attentions and allocations from the government to increase local supplies and protect domestic market from the price fluctuation influenced by global commodity market volatility.
   Enhanced agricultural growth is also needed to sustain the accelerated activities seen in the manufacturing front, they said.
   ‘The manufacturing sector won’t be able to have a sustained growth if farm sector growth is stymied,’ an economist told New Age.

The Awami League president, Sheikh Hasina, and party presidium member Amir Hossain Amu, one of the leading dissidents pressing for sweeping reforms in the party, have traded blames in an informal talk for choosing wrong political tactics.
   At the informal discussion on the proposed reforms on Saturday, Hasina and Amu had some bitter exchanges pointing the finger at each other for dragging the party into a crisis, party insiders said.
   The informal meeting took place at the Bangabandhu Memorial Museum after the placing of flowers at the portrait of Sheikh Mujibur Rahman to mark the party’s 58th founding anniversary.
   The AL president warned the leaders and activists of the party of the consequences of a possible rift over differences centring on the issue of political reforms.
   She called for tackling the situation prudently until democratic atmosphere returned to the country, said a senior leader who attended the informal talks.
   Amu met Hasina for the first time since he returned from Singapore on Wednesday. He accused the AL chief of drawing the ire of the military-backed interim government by censuring it during her visit to the US, signing a controversial agreement with Islamist Khilafat Majlish, and being responsible for April 30 fiasco in 2004 asking for her clarification on the matters.
   On the other hand Hasina wanted to know why Amu had not met her during the crisis and accused him of being a crony and playing game from outside the country, a leader who was present at the meeting said.
   ‘I told Sheikh Hasina that censuring the [interim] government during her visit to US was a wrong tactic,’ Amu told reporters after the discussion, adding that the AL chief defended herself by saying that she had made the comments after a case had been filed against her.
   Amu, however, told Hasina that the negative remarks were made before filing of the case and so her clarification was not acceptable to him.
   He also told the AL chief that the agreement with the Khilafat Majlish was signed without discussion in the party forum and the so-called April 30 deadline was announced by the party general secretary without consulting other central leaders.
   ‘The agreement [with Khilafat] was signed for a certain period to resist communal-fundamentalist forces led by Jamaat and you [AL leaders] authorised me to make any decision for success of the AL-led alliance in the elections,’ Hasina was quoted by presidium member Matia Chowdhury, who was present in the discussion, as telling Amu.
   At one point, the AL president asked Amu how he was able to observe and analyse the situation in Bangladesh while staying in Singapore.
   ‘Singapore is only three hours away from Bangladesh. If the situation in the country could be observed from far away London, why it could not be understood from Singapore,’ Amu told reporters referring to Hasina’s remarks.
   When the AL chief asked Amu why didn’t he meet her during the crisis, Amu replied that tight security forced him to refrain from meeting her.
   ‘Sheikh Hasina urged Amu to face the situation unitedly. She also said that she would not stay [as the party president] for a single moment if the party activists did not want her,’ an organising secretary, Sultan Muhammed Mansur Ahmed, who was present in the meeting, told New Age.
   Tofail Ahmed, another leading dissident, accused Hasina of being too prejudiced against the interim government and reminded her that Sheikh Mujibur Rahman had given time to the Pakistani military junta, sources said.
   But Hasina retorted that the scenario was different at the moment and she had to speak out when human rights were being violated.
   After the discussion, Amu said that he had raised the reform issue at the discussion. Everything will be discussed in the working committee presided over by her [Hasina] as she is still the president of the party, he said.
   He said every reform would be carried out upholding the unity in the party.
   Amu said that the AL chief was also in favour of reforms and there were no differences of opinion in the party about the reform issues.
   ‘So far as we know, a three-member committee consisting of Abu Sayeed, Mahmudur Rahman Manna and AKM Jahangir will finalise the reform proposal which would be placed before the working committee meeting after withdrawal of the ban on politics,’ Amu told reporters at his Eskaton residence.
   He also said that a number of proposals might be rejected in the working committee but hoped that the main objectives—joint leadership and democratic process—should be approved in the committee.
   Amu urged the party leaders to increase contacts with the grassroots level leaders and activists.

The Awami League president, Sheikh Hasina, on Saturday said that necessary reforms would be brought about in the party through discussions in its central working committee.
   ‘Reform proposals would be discussed in the working committee and if necessary we will constitute sub-committees to review the proposals and the councillors will make a final decision in this regard’, Hasina told reporters after placing flowers at the portrait of Sheikh Mujibur Rahman at the Bangabandhu Memorial Museum in observance of the 58th founding anniversary of the AL.
   Terming reform as an ongoing process and expressing her interest in making necessary changes in the party’s constitution, the former prime minister warned that a vested quarter was plotting against the AL but the party was prepared to face any obstacles.
   ‘I wanted elections in June but they did not support me. I hope they have realised the need for early elections by this time,’ she said in an oblique reference to the dissidents in the party, adding that all issues would be settled by the party’s working committee.
   Earlier, the AL president along with some senior leaders of the organisation went to Bangabandhu Memorial Museum in the city’s Dhanmondi area at 8:25am.
   Later, she held an informal discussion with the senior leaders of the party for one and a half hours. Amir Hossain Amu, Abdur Razzak, Tofail Ahmed, Matia Chowdhury and Mukul Bose were, among others, present.
   Hasina explained the circumstances under which her party had forged an electoral alliance with Islamist Khilafat Majlish before the BNP-led coalition government served out its term in October, 2006.
   ‘They [Khilafat] approached us promising a secular policy. But the deal has already been scrapped’, she said.
   About the sources of the party’s funds, she said that the Awami League had never asked for money from anybody as well-wishers and party sympathisers voluntarily donated to the party fund.
   After the informal discussion, Amu told reporters that reform would be carried out in the interest of the party.
   He repeated the statement of the AL chief saying the party forum would decide on everything.
   The leaders and activists of the AL and its front organisations placed flowers at Mujib’s portrait amid tight security.
   Large contingents of law enforcers were deployed in the surroundings of Bangabandhu Memorial Museum when the AL leaders went there.
   Police allowed only the party leaders to enter the museum as per the list provided by the party.
   Earlier, the Dhaka Metropolitan Police allowed only 100 leaders and acti-
   vists to visit the museum
   along with Hasina on the occasion of the party’s founding anniversary.
   The AL usually marks the day through a wide range of programmes, including discussions, rallies and processions.
   But, this year the day has been observed through a low-key programme as the country is now under a state of emergency with all political activities banned.
   The police authorities refused permission for procession or rally and even asked the party activists not to chant slogans during the programme at the museum.
   The Awami Muslim League, which evolved into the Awami League, was founded this day in 1949 with Maulana Abdul Hamid Khan Bhasani and Sheikh Mujibur Rahman as its president and joint secretary respectively.
   The word ‘Muslim’ was dropped from the party’s name in 1955.

The dissident leaders of BNP are drafting a set of proposals for bringing about extensive changes in the party constitution to instil democratic practices in the organisation.
   While the dissidents of the party are considering informing the people of an outline of the proposals at the earliest, the conformists on the other hand are trying to slow down the process of making the draft proposals public.
   ‘We are working on draft proposals for sweeping changes in the party constitution to ensure effective reform of the party,’ a top BNP leader close to the secretary general, Abdul Mannan Bhuiyan, told New Age on Saturday evening. He said, ‘We will make our perceptions of the possible changes in the party constitution public at the earliest.’
   The BNP leader said separate teams were working to prepare amendment proposals of the party constitution as well as mobilising support of the senior and mid- and grassroots-level leaders.
   He claimed a number of leaders, detained during the anti-corruption drive of the interim government, were sending messages from jails supporting the move for democratisation of the party.
   ‘Presently the chairperson enjoys an absolute power to run the party at her whim,’ he noted.
   Ashraf Hossain, a joint secretary general of BNP, said the draft proposals would include curtailing the chairperson’s power substantially, reducing the scope of dynastic influence on the party, ensuring transparency and accountability of financial transaction, and holding regular meetings of different forums of the party to build up a system to contain malpractices using the party name. ‘The proposals will be made public within a couple of days,’ he said.
   Asked about BNP chairperson Khaleda Zia’s initiative to make a separate set of draft proposals, he simply said, ‘We are compiling our own ideas.’
   Asked if it would be a violation of the party constitution if they make their proposals public before submitting those to an appropriate party forum, he said, ‘We have been continually violating the constitution… The party has not held any national council, which elects the chairperson, for the past 14 years although the constitution suggests that the chairperson will be elected for a two-year term… A national executive committee meeting was called after nine years, although the constitutional provision stipulates holding the meeting in every quarter.’
   BNP sources said a section of conformist leaders was holding informal parleys at different places in the city and sending messages to Mannan Bhuiyan to ‘go slow’ over the dissidents’ move for reforms.
   The conformist leaders are also mobilising support apparently to counter the dissidents’ move to get Khaleda Zia out of the frame. The formers are also drafting a separate set of proposals for reforms in the party, keeping her at the helm.
   Mannan Bhuiyan will hold an informal consultation with a section of senior conformist leaders of the party over the much-talked-about reforms anytime soon. ‘The secretary general has requested me to discuss about reforms with him,’ a joint secretary general close to the party chief told New Age on Saturday afternoon.

The chief adviser has asked the education adviser to start work for establishing at least some model schools in rural areas in 2007-2008 fiscal year as part of the government’s plan to reduce disparity in the quality of education between rural and urban areas.
   Fakhruddin Ahmed issued the urgent directive to begin operation of those schools within the shortest possible time even after a hurried initiative was taken by the education ministry for establishing quality schools in 326 upazila headquarters.
   ‘We also don’t want a division [between cities and villages],’ wrote the chief adviser to Ayub Quadri, the education adviser, in a letter on June 16, following a New Age editorial that criticised the discriminatory system of education.
   Fakhruddin, in a letter dated April 10 to Quadri, observed, ‘Quality schools are now mostly in urban areas and it creates discrimination in schooling between urban and rural areas.’
   ‘Take steps to set up some quality schools in upazila headquarters and villages where students from poor families will get priority in enrolment and will be provided with special scholarship,’ said the letter.
   In reply, the education ministry in the last week of April sent a summary to the chief adviser suggesting some alternatives including nationalisation of 326 non-government schools in upazila headquarters.
   There are no government secondary schools in 326 out of the 517 upazilas across Bangladesh. There are now 317 government secondary schools in only 191 upazilas.

It is a rat race. Only those who are able to start at midnight for the next morning’s holiday market can manage a nook in the street. The rest of the vendors have to go back home empty-handed.
   About three lakh hawkers in the capital city are passing uncertain days as many of them earn not a single penny a day, failing to secure a place in the holiday market set up by the government in about 12 places of the city. The market sits in one place only on one specific day a week.
   The competition for space is everywhere but is most intense at Gulistan holiday market, which sits on Fridays. Other notable venues of the rotating market are Manik Miah Avenue, Panthapath, Segun Bagicha, in front of Eastern Plaza at Hatirpool, and in front of Gausia Market.
   Since their eviction from the city footpaths in January, a large number of hawkers have remained almost jobless. Only a small section of them is able to manage places at the holiday market and eke out a living from the sales.
   Monir Hossian, a 20-year-old shoe vendor, said, ‘We start at midnight to secure a place in the holiday market and wait till the traffic police signal us to take place in the street.’ But only a few hundred, mainly the young ones, of the thousands of vendors who gather at the place are able to win the race for the vending spaces, he added.
   Monir said initially they used to write their names or make marks on the street to book their places. But the system failed when the holiday market began to pick up and more hawkers started to throng the venues.
   ‘Sometimes we fall prey to muggers on our way to the market in the small hours and we lose everything,’ said another vendor, Obaid Mia.
   Their sufferings, however, do not end with getting a place in the market, Obaid said, adding that after passing a sleepless night they are forced to pass the day without any place to eat or any toilet facility.
   ‘In the current rainy season, most of the time, we have to sit idle, wrapping our merchandises with polythene sheets. Sometimes, we cannot even sit in the street due to water-logging,’ he said.
   Many a hawker said the idea of running holiday market without making any permanent rehabilitation of the street vendors was too inadequate to address the massive problem.
   According to a rough estimate, only 15,000 hawkers can sit in a holiday market while the rest remain jobless, said M Waliullah Patwari, founding president of the Bangladesh Combined Footpath Hawkers’ Council.
   He said, ‘We do not want holiday markets. This is but a spoon of food to feed a hungry mass.’
   The government should set up hawkers’ markets with all necessary facilities, where every hawker will possess a place by signing an agreement to pay for the possession over five to 10 years, suggested Waliullah.
   He said they also urged the government to permit them to sit in the footpaths in the meantime, leaving a wide-enough space for pedestrians to walk. ‘We have submitted a number of memoranda to advisers to the government. But they are yet to undertake any initiative to ensure our livelihood.’
   There are a number of hawkers’ markets in the city, including those at Bangabazar, Gulistan, Bangabandhu Avenue, Dhanmondi, Nilkhet, Jatrabari, and Jurain. But the street hawkers cannot afford to rent shops at any of them.
   ‘It is simply impossible for any of us to pay Tk 2 to 3 lakh to get possession of a shop in the hawkers’ markets,’ Waliullah pointed out.
   Besides, with the increase in production of low-cost products, the number of street vendors in the city had also been on the rise and they had been meeting the demand of the low-income people for such by vending those in the streets.

Pakistan’s military dictator Ayub Khan loathed ‘crooked’ Bengalis who ‘have no stomach for self-criticism’ and broadsided them for reverting to ‘Hindu language and culture’.
   His statement, which also includes Muslim Bengalis having ‘no culture and language of their own’, came to the public domain after his diaries recently hit the stands in Pakistan and immediately kicked up controversy.
   Titled ‘Dairies of Field Marshall Mohammad Ayub Khan: 1966-72’, the book has come under huge criticism for its views on the 1971 war, where he finds fault with everyone —the ‘crooked’ Bangladeshis, the ‘devious’ Indians and the ‘unreliable’ Americans.
   Ayub Khan kept his diary from September 1966 to October 1972, a very active period in Pakistan’s history.
   It included his yielding of the presidency to Yahya Khan and the period of Yahya’s rule that saw the end of the unified state of Pakistan with the independence of Bangladesh, and also Zulfiqar Ali Bhutto replacing Yahya.
   In his diaries, Ayub Khan shows no understanding of Bangladeshi pride in the country’s linguistic and cultural heritage.
   He writes, ‘When thinking of the problems of East Pakistan, one cannot help feeling that their (Muslim Bengalis’) urge to isolate themselves from West Pakistan and revert to Hindu language and culture is close to the fact that they have no culture and language of their own, nor have they been able to assimilate the culture of the Muslims of the sub-continent, by turning their back on Urdu.
   ‘Further, by doing so they have forced two state languages on Pakistan. This has been a great tragedy for them and the rest of Pakistan. They lack literature on the philosophy of Islam.’
   His tirade against the Bengalis did not end here. Writing on his dealings with the Bengalis in the erstwhile East Pakistan, he notes, ‘We must get East Pakistan ministers to examine if there is any practical solution. I doubt this will bear any fruit as the Bengalis have no stomach for self-criticism nor for listening to the truth about themselves.
   ‘People who do not have these qualities cannot recognise their maladies, let alone cure them.’
   Ayub Khan’s ‘Diaries’ is slowly snowballing into a major controversy with historians, academics and former diplomats condemning the publishing of the book.
   It has been withheld from publication for the past 30 years because of an introductory note where Ayub Khan stated that the diary must be withheld from publication for an unspecified time as his comments may contain sensitive material.
   G Pathasarathy, India’s former ambassador to Pakistan, says the ‘Diaries’ show ‘Pakistan’s rulers never felt any remorse for the genocide of Bangladeshis they committed prior to and during 1971’.
   ‘Also, one cannot help noting how an opinionated military ruler, supremely confident of his abilities and contemptuous of democratic institutions, never understood the Bangladeshi pride and rich cultural lineage,’ Parthasarathy told the news agency.
   S Sajad Haider, a retired commodore of the Pakistan Air Force, says that ‘what stands out in some excerpts is Ayub Khan’s contempt for and denigration of every single one of his former colleagues who turned hostile to his despotic and dishonest policies and rebelled after perceptive deliberation’.
   The book makes several references to the Hindu character and the Bengali outlook.
   ‘I am surprised at the Bengali outlook. It does not conform to any rational yardstick. They were exploited by the caste Hindus, the Muslim rulers and even the British.
   ‘It was at the advent of Pakistan that they got the blessing of freedom and equality of status and a real voice in running of their government...Any normal people should have recognised and rejoiced at this blessing…’
   ‘But they and their politicians and so-called intelligentsia show no realisation of this...In addition, they have cut themselves off from Muslim culture and thought through abhorrence of the Urdu language in which it is expressed, thus making themselves vulnerable to Hindu culture,’ Ayub Khan wrote in his diaries.
   Other targets include General Azam Khan, the most successful governor of former East Pakistan. He was sacked because his popularity among the Bengalis for securing their rights, which was construed as a threat to Ayub’s power.

The president, George W Bush, promised Saturday to permanently bar future illegal immigrants from the United States as he renewed his push for immigration reform, a centerpiece of his domestic agenda.
   A revised reform package was reintroduced in the Senate this past week after its predecessor failed on June 7 to garner enough votes to cut off debate and move for final passage.
   The collapse of the first proposal has prompted a personal intervention by the president, who went to Capitol Hill to plead for giving the bill a second chance.
   But while he has succeeded in putting the proposal back on the Senate agenda, the legislation is facing strong opposition from both Republicans and Democrats, who argue that granting legal status to an estimated 12 million illegal immigrants will only encourage more people to sneak across the poorly guarded border.
   In his weekly radio address, Bush sought to address these concerns, revealing for the first time that under the revised proposal, people crossing a US border illegally will not only be deported, but never allowed to enter the United States again.
   ‘Under this bill, those caught crossing illegally will be permanently barred from returning to the United States on a work or tourist visa,’ the president stated.
   He went on to assure Americans the new bill puts border enforcement first.
   The measure contains 4.4 billion dollars to help the US Border Patrol hire more agents, build additional fencing, purchase infrared cameras and other technologies that help intercept illegal aliens.
   ‘Only after these enforcement tools are in place will certain other parts of the bill go into effect,’ Bush said.
   These ‘other parts’ include a guest worker programme that illegal immigrants currently in the United States would be able to join by applying for a renewable ‘Z’ visa and paying fines.
   Programme participants will be allowed to eventually seek permanent residency and citizenship, although only after returning to their countries of origin.
   Bush said that only those passing a background check, holding jobs, maintaining a clean criminal record and capable of mastering English will qualify for a ‘Z’ visa.
   But he insisted that lawmakers must take action now, before the situation at the southern border gets out of control.
   ‘We have an obligation to solve problems that have been piling up for decades,’ said the president. ‘The status quo is unacceptable.’ The revamped grand bargain, however, is generating as much criticism as its defunct one.
   The American Immigration Lawyers Association, which theoretically stands to benefit from legalisation of 12 million people, called the bill ‘unworkable in its current form’ and promised to ‘vigorously’ lobby against it.
   The group’s primary concern is the bill’s new emphasis on education and professional skills rather than family ties as a basis for granting immigrants residency status.
   Conservative Republicans insist that many of the arguments currently used by Bush were already used by president Ronald Reagan in 1986, when he pushed through Congress his own immigration reform.
   Debate on the new immigration measure is scheduled to begin next week.

US ambassador Patricia A Butenis left Dhaka on Saturday for Washington, ending her 14 months of eventful and exciting assignment in Bangladesh.
   Butenis presented her creden- tials to the Bangladesh president on April 16, 2006 as ambassador to Bangladesh.
   She left in the morning by British Airways. Butenis will take up her new assignment in trouble-torn Iraq.
   Geeta Pasi will be acting as US charge de affaires in Bangladesh.
   When asked, American Center director Jonathan Cebra said he guessed new US ambassador was likely to arrive in Dhaka in October.
   US president George Bush, who nominates ambassadors, has not yet named anyone for Bangladesh.

Niko Resources, a Canadian company, is yet to pay any compensation for depletion of the gas reservoir and environmental damage even three years after the two successive blow-outs at the Tengratila gas-field at Chhatak in Sylhet.
   Petroleum experts in the country fear that the compensation claim for damage caused by the Tengratila blow-outs might be shelved one day just as the Magurchhara compensation claim was.
   The law ministry under the interim government in the first week of May this year appointed Moinul Husein and Company, a law firm owned by the law and communication adviser Barrister Moinul Husein, as legal adviser for the government in the controversy between Niko Resources and the government.
   But the appointed company, in line with Moinul Husein’s directive, expressed its inability to play the role of legal adviser in the arbitration process as questions have been raised about the previous experience of the company on such a matter, said sources in the ministry.
   The two blow-outs at Tengratila took place within a span of six months between January 7 and June 24, 2004.
   The first blow-out occurred when Niko was drilling the main well and the second one took place when it was drilling a relief well to seal off the main exploration well.
   The blow-outs caused huge losses to the inhabitants of six surrounding villages, significantly depleted the gas reserve of the field and led to environmental degradation.
   The two blow-outs also forced the people in the surrounding areas to leave their homesteads and to remain away for about six months after cracks developed in the surrounding areas and gas continued to spew out of the cracks for more than one year.
   The government formed seven probe committees and all of them confirmed that either Niko’s inefficiency or negligence was responsible for the two blow-outs.
   The probe committees estimated that damage worth Tk 35 crore and Tk 50 crore was caused by the first and second blow-outs respectively, and claimed that there were 115 billion cubic feet of gas at the Tengratila gas-field.
   The probe committee reports said the first blow-out burnt around 1 billion cubic feet of gas in the surface layer and between 5.89 bcf and 51 bcf in the sub-surface layer, and the second blow-out burnt 2 bcf of gas in the surface layer, said Petrobangla sources.
   Mahmudur Rahman, the then adviser to the energy ministry, asked the Niko Resources to pay for the loss of 8.89 bcf of gas and only Tk 84 crore for environmental damage.
   The government also demanded bank guarantee of Tk 250 crore for any further damage in the gas-field in the future, said sources.
   But Niko did not agree with the government and expressed its doubt about the method of the estimation of gas loss. It also said there is no provision in the joint venture agreement for bank guarantee.
   Niko has paid about Tk 2 crore to the 624 affected families and schools, mosques and temples of six villages including Tengra, Ajabpur, Kaiyajuri, Shantinagar and Girishpur.
   But the villagers have been suffering the fall-outs of the two blow-outs including contamination of drinking water, decreased fertility of croplands and scarcity of fish in the water bodies. Fishing is one of main sources of the local people’s income, said villagers who live near the gas-field.
   Azam Mukit, general manager of administration in Niko, told New Age on Saturday afternoon they have paid Tk 5 crore to the local people as compensation so far.
   ‘We have also taken measures to supply pure drinking water to the villagers,’ he claimed.

Protesting against the death of two hawkers on early Friday in Gulistan area, the fellow hawkers have decided to boycott the so-called ‘holiday market’.
   Two hawkers, Riaz Uddin, 38, son of Abdul Rashid, and Sujan, 18, son of Fazal Haque, were run over by a speeding van and another hawker, Jahangir Alam, was critically injured.
   Hundreds of hawkers gathered at around 2:30am near the Mobile Market in Gulistan underpass in a bid to occupy the best places for selling their wares in the holiday market that opens on Friday when the tragedy took place.
   ‘We have decided to boycott the holiday market. We request the government to allow us to operate on the streets until a sustainable rehabilitation scheme is implemented,’ M Waliullah Patwari, chairman of Bangladesh Sammilito Hawkers Parishad, told New Age. The hawkers said that high officials of the police, after the sad incident, assured them that their demands would be considered and their leaders would be invited to a meeting with the joint commissioner of traffic, Jasim Uddin, on Sunday afternoon.
   ‘If the government fails to fulfill our demands in the meeting, we will announce our next course of action,’ said Waliullah.
   Riaz’s body was buried at his family graveyard at Alaecha Purbapara under Lakhsham upazila in Comilla on Friday night, and Sujan was buried at Chandna under Nagalcourt upazila in the same district.
   Manik Mia, a cousin of the deceased Sujan, filed a case with Paltan police station on Friday and sub-inspector Arshad Ali was assigned to be the investigation officer of the case.
   ‘We have conducted several drives to nab the killer driver, but have found no trace of him or the vehicle. Finding him will be difficult since none of the hawkers could tell us the number of the pick-up van,’ the investigation officer told New Age.
   The condition of the injured hawker, Jahangir, who was admitted to Dhaka Orthopaedics Hospital has remained unchanged till Saturday afternoon.
   ‘The doctors have encased both of his legs in plaster and also slung up one of his legs,’ Mobin, a fellow hawker and an acquaintance of Jahangir, told New Age.
   The Samajtantrik Sramik Front, a workers’ organisation, on Saturday expressed deep concern over Friday’s incident, and demanded free treatment of the injured and compensation to the families of the deceased.
   The organisation’s leaders also appealed to the interim government to rehabilitate the hawkers immediately as the government had evicted them from the country’s footpaths and slums without providing them with alternative venues and sources of income.
   Hundreds of thousands of poor and unemployed people used to vend goods at cheap prices on the pavements, but their constitutional rights were not recognised by previous governments, said the organization’s press release signed by its president Abdullah Sarkar and secretary Razequzzaman Ratan.

A teenage boy died in police custody in the city early Saturday. The police brought critically injured Jamal Uddin, 17, son of Abdul Malek of 7/8, Tin-shed Colony in Mirpur Section 14, and Mohammad Kajal, 18, of the same area, to Dhaka Medical College Hospital at around 8:15pm Friday.
   Jamal succumbed to the wounds at around 3:15am on Saturday, with an unconscious Kajal still fighting for his life at the corridor of DMCH Ward 31.
   ‘Jamal died due to inhuman torture. His body bore a number of injury marks in various parts,’ an on-duty physician told New Age.
   The police said a team of army arrested the two teenage boys on Thursday night at Kafrul Army Quarters on charge of stealing and handed them over to the Kafrul police on Friday night. A theft case was filed against them with Kafrul police station.
   As their condition deteriorated, Alamgir Hossain, a sub-inspector of the police station, brought them to the DMCH.
   Faruk Hossain, elder brother of Jamal, told newsmen at the DMCH morgue that an army team picked up Jamal and Kajal, a taxicab driver, on Thursday night when they were talking to each other at a makeshift tea stall Faruk owns at Mirpur 14.
   Faruk alleged the army personnel handed the youths over to the police after beating them up severely.
   The body of the deceased was handed over to his family on Saturday afternoon after an autopsy.

The Rapid Action Battalion filed on Saturday a case against former BNP lawmaker Sarwar Jamal Nizam, suspected of masterminding the abduction and killing of businessman Jamaluddin Chowdhury in 2003.
   RAB 7 deputy assistant director Zahidul Hoque filed the case under the Special Powers Act with the Patenga police against Jamal, also brother of the navy chief, Sarwar Jahan Nizam, on charge of illegally keeping drugs.
   The investigation officer, subinspector Bashir Khan, said they would pray for Jamal to be remanded in custody for interrogation. The battalion said Jamal, during primary interrogation, had admitted to taking Tk 1.5 lakh from candidates for teacher’s positions at primary schools.
   The army-led joint forces arrested Jamal at a place near the Chittagong Club at about 00:45am Friday in possession of five cans of beer and three bottles of foreign liquor. His vehicle was also seized. He was produced in court Friday night and the court sent him to jail.
   Jamaluddin, vice-president of the Chittagong district (south) BNP, who was running for the Anwara constituency seat in the parliament, was kidnapped from Chandgaon in the city on July 24, 2003.
   Shahidul Islam alias Shahid Chairman, an accused in the case, arrested by the battalion on August 17, 2005, said that Jamal had been killed one month inside his abduction.
   Kala Mahbub, another accused in the case, later located the grave of Jamaluddin. He said they had killed him after Maruf Nizam, younger brother of Sarwar Jamal, had offered Tk 1 crore for the job.
   The battalion dug out Jamaluddin’s remains from Dakshin Kanchannagar at Fatikchari on August 24, 2005.
   The family members received the skeleton from the police on March 10, 2006 after a DNA test conducted in Singapore.
   Jamaluddin’s family has been accusing Jamal and Maruf of masterminding the abduction and killing over political rivalry since the incident in 2003.
   The Criminal Investigation Department on July 10, 2006 filed the charge sheet in the case, implicating 16 people in the case.
   The court, however, rejected the charge sheet on an appeal of Jamaluddin’s family as Jamal and Nizam were not included in the charge sheet.
   The department submitted a supplementary charge sheet on October 10 the same year and Jamaluddin’s family again appealed to the charge to reject the charge sheet on the same ground.
   The court ordered reinvestigation of the case. The High Court, however, stayed the reinvestigation on an appeal of Maruf Nizam.

A four-member Indian delegation, led by foreign secretary Shibshankar Menon, arrives in Dhaka today for foreign secretary-level consultations between India and Bangladesh on the entire gamut of bilateral relations.
   The delegation, coming at the invitation of Bangladesh foreign secretary M Touhid Hossain, will have ‘wide-ranging discussions on all aspects of India-Bangladesh bilateral relations’ during the four-day visit, a foreign ministry announcement said.
   Besides, the Indian foreign secretary will also call on high dignitaries in Bangladesh as part of the parleys.
   ‘The government is of the view that the visit of the Indian Foreign Secretary will be yet another important opportunity to carry on the process of constructive and forward-looking engagement between the two countries,’ says the official release.

The jute and textiles ministry has claimed Tk 550 crore from the Bangladesh Export Processing Zones Authority as price of the 295 acres of land of the now-defunct Adamjee Jute Mills, said a high official of the ministry.
   The Bangladesh Jute Mills Corporation, which had owned and regulated the jute factory until its closure, handed over the entire Adamjee compound by the Sitalakhya river to the BEPZA as per a cabinet decision in 2005.
   After closure of the country’s biggest jute unit in 2002, the immediate past BNP-led alliance government was supposed to sell out the Adamjee land to local entrepreneurs to set up an industrial park, meant especially for garment, knitwear and textile units, and deposit the money with the BJMC to help solve its liquidity crisis for running public-sector jute mills.
   Instead, the government finally decided to hand over the land to the BEPZA to turn it into a zone of enterprises owned mainly by foreigners. The BJMC was asked to cede its right on the Adamjee land to the BEPZA in exchange of Tk 1, said officials of the corporation.
   However, in the wake of recent aggravation of crisis that plagued all the 22 public-sector jute mills, the jute ministry has decided to reiterate its claim for the money and is scheduled to hold a meeting with the BEPZA in this regard tomorrow.
   When contacted, a BEPZA high official denied receiving any such claim or letter from the jute ministry inviting them to the meeting. ‘Why such a question is being raised so late? I don’t know anything about any such claim for money,’ the official added.
   Asked about this, a high official of the jute ministry said the government could initiate any move if it considered that to be good for the country ‘but it is the responsibility of bureaucrats and technocrats concerned to point out the implications of such a decision’.
   The official said the land clearly owned by a corporation could not be legally handed over to another authority or businessmen free of cost. ‘We have a moral responsibility to fight for the money and solve the cash crunch of the BJMC.’
   The post-independence government nationalised Adamjee Jute Mills founded by Sir Adamjee Hazi Daud way back in 1950 at Siddhirganj of Narayanganj 15 kilometres off Dhaka city. It was then the biggest jute mills in Asia.
   The BJMC also will claim Tk 75 crore from the Dhaka City Corporation for taking possession of a huge piece of its land in the city.
   The BJMC claims from the two state entities amount to Tk 625 crore, more than the Tk 600 crore the jute ministry has sought from the national exchequer to revitalise the state-owned jute enterprises in three fiscal years.
   Currently, the BJMC is overburdened with around Tk 2,000 crore it had to borrow to offset the losses incurred by the state-owned jute mills over the years. But the interim government has apparently turned away its face from the jute sector in making budgetary allocations for the next fiscal year.

The Afghan president, Hamid Karzai angrily criticised Saturday ‘indiscriminate and unprecise’ operations by NATO and US-led forces in Afghanistan, which he said had killed 90 civilians in just over a week.
   The grim-faced president told reporters that one recent operation had killed 52 people in three days of fighting in the southern province of Uruzgan.
   ‘Attacks causing civilian casualties, as I have said before, are not acceptable for us. It is no longer tolerated,’ Karzai told reporters.
   ‘As you are aware over the past several days, as result of indiscriminate and unprecise operations of NATO and coalition forces, our people suffered casualties,’ he said, flanked by his defense minister Abdul Rahim Wardak.
   He listed four operations over the past 10 days, the most deadly being the one in Uruzgan’s Chora district.
   ‘In Chora, NATO, coalition forces fired artillery on Chora from Tirin Kot in which according to our latest information ... 52 of our countrymen were martyred,’ Karzai said, speaking at his palace in the capital.
   The NATO force said Karzai’s figure for the number of civilian dead was similar to its own but that it was unclear if they had been killed by security forces or Taliban fighters.
   The president also referred to strikes by the NATO-led International Security Assistance Force in the southern province of Helmand early Friday that police said killed 25 people, including nine women and three young children.
   The president said his repeated calls on the ISAF and US-led coalition to coordinate their operations with Afghan security forces to avoid hurting civilians had gone unheeded.
   ‘From now onwards they have to work the way we ask them to work here. That’s the line,’ he said.
   An umbrella body of non-government groups said this week its figures showed that troops had killed nearly 250 civilians this year.
   This was happening because of ‘the extreme use of force, the disproportionate use of force to a situation and the lack of coordination with the Afghan government,’ Karzai said.
   ‘You don’t fight a terrorist by firing a field gun 37 kilometres (23 miles) away into a target. That’s definitely, surely bound to cause civilian casualties,’ he said.

The prime minister, Tony Blair, ended his swansong appearance on the international stage on a high note Saturday, helping clinch a deal for a new EU treaty and trumpeting that Europe was turning Britain’s way.
   And tributes flowed from his fellow European Union leaders after a marathon summit in Brussels, which he said allowed the reforming bloc to ‘move on’ after two years of institutional inertia.
   His last EU stand was a triumphant one, securing all the key points without which he said he would not do a deal.
   ‘I am sorry that Blair is going; he has always been a man who sought compromise in Europe,’ said the French president, Nicolas Sarkozy, who succeeded Blair’s long-time EU nemesis Jacques Chirac only last month.
   Blair, who stands down next week, claimed his decade in power had seen a transformation of Britain’s role in Europe from the relationship left by Margaret Thatcher’s hardline handbagging.
   Ironically, the outgoing British leader spent his last EU summit standing firm in defence of Britain’s ‘red lines’ on a new EU treaty to replace the bloc’s doomed constitution.
   Blair acknowledged that he would always defend Britain’s national interests–but he insisted that Britain was a ‘constructive player in Europe’–and was also setting the free market agenda for the continent.
   ‘Europe has changed. We have a Commission president who is a reformer. We have got an enlarged EU with real allies for Britain today,’ he told a pre-dawn press conference after the deal was clinched in all-night talks.
   Blair’s relations with Europe over his 10 years in office have been uneven, to say the least.
   They plummeted to an unprecedented low during the 2003 Iraq war crisis, when Britain led a pro-US group within the bloc, putting him at loggerheads with the EU’s traditional heavyweight states and almost splitting the Union apart.
   But Blair, who has long pressed his EU counterparts to enact free-market reforms, was widely praised by the central European newcomer states who joined the bloc in May 2004 and whose EU hopes he had championed for years.
   More recently the arrival of new leaders in traditional EU big-hitters France and Germany–Sarkozy and Angela Merkel respectively–has also tipped the balance in Blair’s pro-reform favour.
   Blair said Saturday’s EU treaty deal would finally allow the 27-nation bloc to get moving again, two years after it was plunged into an unprecedented crisis by French and Dutch voters’ rejection of its long-planned constitution.
   ‘The most important thing is that it allows us to move on to things that are ultimately far more important,’ he said, citing issues like the economy, terrorism, immigration and climate change.
   Above all Blair underlined how things had changed over the last decade, saying that when he took office in 1997 ‘Britain was completely isolated in Europe.
   ‘It had been years since we had put forward anything positive. In the 10 years that have followed we have led the way on economic reform, on defence policy, on (EU) enlargement,’ he said.
   And slamming Britain’s notorious eurosceptic lobby, he added: ‘My position throughout the course of my time as prime minister has been to get out of this endless and destructive negativity, and realise that Britain has a lot to offer Europe. And Europe has a lot to offer Britain.’
   Unlike Chirac, who was presented with a beer mug by Merkel at the bloc’s 50th anniversary celebrations in Berlin in April, Blair left the EU stage without a gift.
   Merkel said that the late finish to the negotiations meant ‘I was only able to utter a few warm words and express thanks to him’.
   But the Danish prime minister, Anders Fogh Rasmussen, paid a warm tribute, saying Blair ‘has contributed in a very valuable way to European cooperation,’ adding: ‘He’s really a pro-European.’

Thousands of anti-coup protesters, organised by allies of ousted premier Thaksin Shinawatra, marched Saturday to the Thai army headquarters to demand that the junta step down.
   About 6,000 people joined the march from a plaza near the Grand Palace to the army headquarters two kilometres away, according to police.
   Two Buddhist monks in saffron-coloured robes led the march along with some of Thaksin’s closest allies. Many of the protesters wore white T-shirts with headbands that read ‘Non-violence.’
   About 3,000 unarmed police stood guard along the tree-lined Royal Avenue as the marchers made their way through Bangkok’s historic district, which is filled with palaces, temples, and government offices.
   ‘Up to 900 unarmed police are deployed at each point along the marchers’ path. They are under strict orders not to use violence,’ Bangkok police chief lieutenant general Adison Noncie told reporters.
   The marchers want the junta, which calls itself the Council for National Security, to resign and for new elections to be held.
   They shouted ‘CNS get out’ and carried banners reading ‘Overthrow CNS.’
   Protesters have taken to the streets every night this month to demand the junta’s resignation, sometimes attracting as many as 15,000 people.
   Pro-democracy activists, anti-poverty campaigners and Buddhist monks have staged their own protests against the junta in recent months.
   The protests began to grow after Thaksin suffered a series of sharp legal setbacks that angered his supporters, who feel he has been unfairly persecuted by the junta.
   Last month a military-appointed court disbanded Thaksin’s party and barred him from political office for five years.
   Anti-corruption authorities, also appointed by the military, have frozen more than 1.5 billion dollars of Thaksin’s assets, while prosecutors this week filed formal criminal charges against him in the Supreme Court.
   The police have also ordered Thaksin to appear in Bangkok next week to hear new charges of fraud, but the billionaire politician has expressed a reluctance to return to Thailand over fears for his safety.

The space shuttle Atlantis returned safely to Earth Friday, ending a two-week, five-million-mile mission for its crew of seven.
   ‘Welcome back, congratulations on a great mission,’ NASA mission control said after the shuttle docked at Edwards Air Force Base in California.
   The seven Atlantis astronauts had been due to return to Earth Thursday, but thunderstorms scuttled attempts to land at the Kennedy Space Centre in Cape Canaveral, Florida and the shuttle was directed to the California base.
   NASA is sensitive about landing the shuttle in bad weather as clouds below 2,400 meters block the pilot’s vision as the ship hurtles down to the landing strip.
   Friday’s landing at 15:49pm (1949 GMT) came as the clock ticked down on the shuttle’s batteries with only having one more day of life left.
   The US space agency would have preferred to land the shuttle in Florida as it costs nearly two million dollars to return it from California piggy-backed atop a Boeing 747 and this could affect the schedule of future missions.
   More than an hour after landing, the crew was still on board powering down the computers and checking all systems, although they had been allowed to remove their orange flight-and-entry suits.
   Earlier, shuttle commander Rick Sturckow and pilot Lee Archambault had fired up the thrusters after being given the green light to leave orbit and come plummeting toward Earth.
   The shuttle’s thrusters, in a ‘deorbit burn,’ slow the orbiter, which falls out of orbit.
   The craft reaches speeds of more than 26,000 kilometres per hour as it plummets earthward.
   On approach, the shuttle comes down 20 times faster than a commercial airliner. But unlike a jet, the pilot, flying without power, gets only one try at landing.
   Atlantis brought back with it Indian American astronaut Sunita Williams, who had been on the ISS since December. She set a new record for the longest uninterrupted space flight by a woman, breaking the mark set by Shannon Lucid in 1996 of 188 days, and four hours.
   The entire crew was to undergo medical checks once they leave the shuttle.
   Atlantis left behind one crew member, Clayton Anderson, who is to stay on the orbiting research lab for four months alongside two Russian cosmonauts.

The US military announced the deaths of eight more US troops in Iraq on Saturday, including four in a single roadside bomb attack northwest of Baghdad.
   The four soldiers were killed and their Iraqi interpreter wounded when the bomb detonated near their vehicle during combat operations on Saturday, the military said.
   An airman and three other soldiers were also reported dead on Saturday, taking US losses in this month alone to 68.
   The airman died of wounds suffered when a roadside bomb exploded near his vehicle in the northern city of Tikrit.
   A roadside bomb, followed by small arms fire, killed two US soldiers and wounded three in eastern Baghdad on Saturday while another soldier died the same day due to a ‘non-battle’ cause, the military said.
   The latest fatalities took the military’s losses in Iraq to 3,545 since the March 2003 invasion, according to an AFP count based on Pentagon figures.

A member of India’s lowest Hindu caste will become chief justice of its powerful Supreme Court for the first time, officials said on Saturday, but his community still faces widespread discrimination.
   Justice KG Balakrishnan, 61, will take over on Jan. 14 when the incumbent, YK Sabharwal, retires.
   Balakrishnan’s selection to one of the most powerful posts in India was approved by the president, APJ Abdul Kalam this week.
   ‘The president assented to this on Thursday. It was forwarded to the law ministry on Friday,’ an official said.
   Balakrishnan is a member of India’s Dalit community–formerly known as ‘untouchables’ and the lowest group in Hinduism’s caste system.
   He is from the communist-ruled southern state of Kerala, which has India’s highest literacy rate and some of the country’s best social indicators including for Dalits.
   Dalits, who make up about 16 per cent of India’s 1.1-billion population, still face intense prejudice and even violence in many rural areas and small towns.
   In many areas, they are still not allowed to enter temples or even sit next to upper caste Hindus.
   But a small section of Dalits have benefited from affirmative action for them in colleges, universities and in government jobs.
   India’s first Dalit president, KR Narayanan, held office from 1997 until 2002.
   Balakrishnan said his initial focus would be on ensuring honest people enter the judiciary.
   ‘We have to carefully scrutinise the antecedents of judicial officers and block the way (of corrupt people) right at the entry level,’ he was quoted as saying in The Times of India.

The Iraqi High Tribunal is set to give its verdict on Sunday on six former aides of Saddam Hussein accused of slaughtering 182,000 Kurdish villagers during a 1988 military campaign in northern Iraq.
   The most prominent defendant is Ali Hassan al-Majid, a cousin of Saddam who is widely known as ‘Chemical Ali’ for his alleged use of chemical gases.
   He faces a charge of genocide, while the five others in the dock are accused of war crimes and crimes against humanity, all charges that carry the death penalty.
   They include Sabir al-Duri, former director of military intelligence; Sultan Hashim al-Tai, a former defence minister; Hussein Rashid al-Tikriti, former armed forces deputy chief of operations; Farhan al-Juburi, a former military intelligence commander; and Taher al-Ani, former governor of the main northern city of Mosul.
   Majid is the only individual besides Saddam to be charged with genocide over the so-called Anfal campaign against the Kurds in the late 1980s. Saddam, ousted from power by US-led invasion forces in April 2003, was executed on December 30 for crimes against humanity in a separate case.
   All six former regime officials are accused of masterminding the slaughter of 182,000 Kurdish villagers during the Anfal campaign in Iraq’s northern Kurdish region in 1988, when the Iran-Iraq war was at its peak.
   Prosecutors have demanded the death penalty for five of the accused, but have asked the court to free Ani for lack of evidence.
   Chief prosecutor Munquith al-Faroon has also personally requested a more lenient sentence for Duri.
   Majid was allegedly responsible for the widespread use of chemical gas on the Kurds during the campaign, when Saddam’s armed forces bombed and gassed tens of thousands of Kurdish villagers.
   Over the course of the trial, which opened on August 21, 2006, a defiant Majid has said he was right to order the attacks.
   ‘I am the one who gave orders to the army to demolish villages and relocate the villagers,’ he said at one hearing. ‘The army was responsible to carry out those orders. I gave the army instructions.’
   Since the execution of Saddam, Majid has emerged as the star defendant in the trial and occupies the front seat in the dock previously occupied by Saddam.
   Human Rights Watch expressed concern on Friday that the verdicts in the Anfal trial could be flawed as it charged they were in the previous trial of Saddam over the killing of Shias from the village of Dujail in the 1980s.

A fire swept through two markets on Kabi Nazrul Islam Road in Bogra Saturday night, burning at least 100 shops, the police and witnesses said.
   Two firefighters were injured in their struggle to douse the fire that was spotted at about 8:30pm at Ahmed Market and Sheikh Market. The injured are Rezaul Karim and Harunur Rashid.
   The Bogra police chief Shamim Iqbal said the police had telephoned the Fire Service and Civil Defense in the neighbouring areas, including Sonatala and Santahar.

Some 52 consignments of hilsa fish exported to India through Benapole land port during the last six weeks earning one million US dollars.
   Officials said the export earning could be much higher but for under-invoicing by the dishonest traders. They said hilsa fish were exported heavily under-invoiced at $3 dollars per kg only.
   Of late, the exporters raised the price to 3.5 dollars at the behest Indian importers. Still it is under-invoiced. In fact, they are exporting at 5 to 6 dollars, according to the size and quality, officials added.
   The excess Indian currency available to the exporters from the difference is used in smuggling or hundi depriving the exchequer.
   Information received from markets of Hawra, Shialdah, Patipukur, Barasat across the border said Hilsha was selling at minimum Rs 250, equivalent to Tk 363.
   Most of the hilsa consignments came from Chittagong, Barisal, Chandpur, Jhalakati and Khulna.
   Traders hoped that the volume of export would increase during the peak season in July to September. The supply is much higher this year because of strict restriction on catching jatka.