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Speakers at a seminar on Saturday stressed that the SAARC should take the role of ‘strategy coordinator’ in fighting poverty replicating national success stories in the regional level.
   ‘The role of the SAARC should be as a strategy coordinator in fighting poverty in South Asia,’ former adviser to the caretaker government CM Shafi Sami told the seminar organised by the Campaign for Good Governance at CIRDAP auditorium in the city.
   The seminar was held ahead of the ensuing SAARC summit to be held in New Delhi in April.
   Sami, also an ex-diplomat, proposed formation of national committees to monitor the issues relating to mutual interests of the member countries to help coordinate the strategies by the regional forum.
   The former ambassador said India should play key role in making SAARC an effective body as it was the lone country to have borders with all member states.
   Former minister Abul Mal Abdul Muhit, however, said the SAARC could only ‘give us strategies to alleviate poverty, while we will have to eradicate our poverty ourselves.’
   Other discussants said the SAARC must change its charter to accommodate bilateral issues in the forum level to make it an effective organisation as it could not act reflecting the people’s aspirations even after two decades after its constitution.
   They said the burning bilateral issues like water, power, gas, port, Tipaimukh dam, terrorism and border management should also be discussed in non-government level ahead of the summit.
   Former adviser to the caretaker government Advocate Sultana Kamal, former state minister Abul Hasan Chowdhury, former ambassador Mohammad Jamir, JSD president Hasanul Haque Inu, former state minister Mosharraf Hossain Shahjahan, former army chief Lt Genl (retd) Mahbubur Rahman and former secretary Karar Mahmudul Hassan, among others, took part in the discussion moderated by secretary of Campaign for Good Governance Rezaul Karim Chowdhury and Mohsin Ali of the same organisation.

Farmers in the country’s southern region depend solely on single crop cultivation, which makes it difficult for them to earn a living throughout the year from farming.
   Lack of efforts for crop diversification turned agriculture less profitable for farmers in the south than in the north, local farmers and agriculture officials said.
   Field visits to remote areas of Borguna, Barisal, Patuakhali, Jalakati, Pirojpur and Bagerhat districts revealed that the farmers still rely on traditional farming due to lack of any training on and support for modern agriculture.
   Most of the farmers depend largely on single crop like aman while other crops like vegetables, watermelon and some varieties of lentil are cultivated in limited scale in these districts.
   Farmers complained that they hardly saw any effective initiative from the government for encouraging crop diversification or introducing modern agriculture in the southern districts like the measures often taken up for the northern region.
   Even the sub-assistant agriculture officers, who are posted at field levels, rarely meet with the farmers to motivate them for cultivating different profitable crops and adopting suitable technologies and methods, alleged the farmers.
   The filed level officials never go to the farmers’ fields and hardly give any advice to them, said Abdul Wazed, a village doctor and also a farmer of Bhandaria upazila.
   A 50-year old farmer Abdur Rashid of village Junia, upazila Bhandaria of Pirojpur district told New Age, ‘Farmers have no adequate training on modern crops.’
   Farmers mainly depend on traditional crops like aus and aman during April to July and August to December cultivation seasons of the year, while in winter, their crop fields remain fellow due to some natural and artificial problems.
   Farmers have not been motivated to cultivate hybrid or short duration crops in these districts and they cultivate late variety crops on their own initiatives during the rabi season. Such crops often do not prove much rewarding, said an agriculture extension official.
   Salinity, which is on the rise in some parts of the south, hampers preparation of boro seedbeds during the rabi season, said Mohammed Monwar of village Hewlibunia under Barguna sadar upazila.
   Due to the natural pressure of water during the months from April to August, farmers of the southern region can not cultivate crops other than aman, said Mohammad Hares of Telekhali union under Bhandaria upazila of Pirojpur district.
   While contacted, Bhandaria upazila agriculture officer Shawpan Kumar Mondol said the main problem of southern districts is salinity in water, which badly hampers the cultivation of rabi crops.
   The official, however, said around 60,000 hectares of land of these districts are likely to come under winter crops cultivation while the government will take initiative to build polder on the river to block saline water from entering the crop land.
   The government should take up special projects to train farmers on different crops like vegetables and water management mainly to promote boro cultivation, said an agriculture extension official.

Bangladesh observed the first round of the 15th National Immunisation Day on Saturday aimed at immunising 24 million children aged below five. The second round will be held on April 8.
   The government with the support from UNICEF, World Health Organisation, Japan, Rotary International and the Centres for Disease Control and Prevention, Atlanta began the immunisation programme across the country when the first re-emergent case of polio was detected in March 2006.
   Seventeen polio cases were detected in 11 districts, according to the Expanded Programme of Immunisation.
   The adviser to the government in charge of the health ministry, ASM Matiur Rahman, inaugurated the first round of the 15th NID by administering vaccines to a number of children in a programme at the EPI building of the Directorate General of Health Services at Mahakhali on Friday.
   On Saturday, the health adviser administered vaccines to a number of children in Dhaka Shishu Hospital.
   About seven lakh health workers and volunteers are assigned to immunise the under-five children against polio as part of a drive to eradicate the infectious disease that can cause permanent paralysis.
   About 1.40 lakh vaccination centres have been set up at bus stands, launch and ferry terminals, railway stations and highway toll centres to make sure that the children who may be travelling on the vaccination days are not left out.
   The NID is also be followed by a four-day house-to-house search for any children who may have missed the vaccination.
   Polio is a highly infectious disease caused by a virus which attacks the central nervous system, causing paralysis, muscular atrophy and deformation, and, in some cases, even death.
   Bangladesh is highly vulnerable to an outbreak of polio because of an endemic state of the disease in the neighbouring India.
   In order to ensure total elimination of polio, the government is scheduled to hold four rounds of NIDs in 2007 and it would continue two rounds of NIDs every year from 2008, until bordering India, where polio cases are often encountered, turns polio-free.

The 11th annual scientific conference of the International Centre for Diarrhoeal Diseases Research, Bangladesh began at the Radisson Water Garden Hotel in the Dhaka city on Saturday.
   The three-day conference, inaugurated by the health and family welfare adviser, ASM Matiur Rahman, aims at strengthening partnerships among healthcare providers, planners, policy makers, donor community and development organisations through disseminating research findings.
   At a news briefing, ahead of the inaugural function of the conference, researchers emphasised continuous research and implementation of their outcomes to achieve the goals of public health indicators of the millennium development goals.
   Infant mortality rate in the country is still high – 40 deaths per one thousand live births, while about 54 per cent of the new born die within two days of their birth, they said at the briefing held at the ICDDR,B auditorium on Saturday.
   Dr David A Sack, executive director of the ICDDR,B, at the briefing said, ‘About half of the new born die within a few days of their birth – which is a substantial number of human lives lost every year. We are looking for ways to reduce the death rate through more focused researches.’
   Dr Sack said, ‘To put our researches into real action, we are trying to formulate what kind of ‘knowledge package’ can be developed to use the outcomes in the national public health programmes of individual countries.’
   Professor Mahmudur Rahman, director of the Institute of Epidemiology Disease Control and Research in his address said, ‘Like the previous years, we are hoping to do some collaborative researches. I am sure some of the research presentations at the conference might come in use for us.’
   He mentioned that the government might soon introduce giving vitamin – A capsules as supplement to all pregnant women.
   Dr Alejandro Cravioto, deputy executive director of the institution said, a total of 198 international research papers would be presented at the conference, of which 154 are from Bangladesh and 93 from the ICDDR,B alone.
   They also said ORS, baby zinc solution, measles and rota virus vaccines are some of the outcomes of the decades of research at the ICDDR,B which have been put into use in our national health programs. ‘Let us hope that more research can help reduce the disease burdens not only in Bangladesh but in all developing countries,’ said Dr Alejandro Cravioto.
   Dr Ishtiaq A Zaman conducted the conference also attended by Dr MA Salam, Dr Abdullah Brooks, Dr Steve Luby and Dr Kim Street Field.

The founder of the Bangladesh Rural Advancement Committee, Fazle Hasan Abed, has been selected for the Henry R Kravis Prize in Leadership, an annual award administered by the Claremont McKenna College and The Kravis Leadership Institute in the United States.
   Abed will receive the award, second of its kind and worth $250,000, for ‘his innovative work with BRAC in health, education and micro-finance’, said a press release issued in Dhaka on Saturday.
   The selection committee for the prize includes Nobel laureate in economics Amartya Sen and former president of the World Bank James D Wolfensohn.
   The committee recognised Abed for showing extraordinary leadership in the non-profit sector. Under his leadership, BRAC grew over the past 35 years into one of the largest development organisations in the world, reaching more than 110 million people.
   Born in 1936, Fazle Hasan Abed was educated in Dhaka and London. In 1972, he founded BRAC, an organisation which operates across Bangladesh and beyond — in Afghanistan, Sri Lanka, Tanzania, Uganda and Southern Sudan.
   Abed has also got a number of national and international awards, including the Ramon Magsaysay Award (1980), UNICEF’s Maurice Pate Award (1992), Olof Palme Award (2001), the Gates Award for Global Health (2004) and the UNDP Mahbub ul Haq Award for outstanding contribution to human development (2004).

A week-long film festival began in Shaukat Osman Auditorium of the Central Public Library at Shahbagh in Dhaka on Saturday to mark the silver jubilee of Chalachchitram Film Society.
   Veteran actor Subhash Dutta inaugurated the festival of the films of humanity and amity and country’s War of Independence as well.
   President of the society and noted physician Ashequr Rahman Khan also spoke at the inaugural ceremony.
   The speakers said the festival would give the viewers opportunity to see world renowned films. They also hoped that the society would arrange this sort of festival regularly.
   ‘Ballad of a Solder’ by Russian director Grigori Chukhrai’s was screened on the first day.
   Today, the organisers will screen The Road to Guantanamo (90 minutes, 2006), directed by Michael Winterbottom and Mart Whitercross of the United Kingdom at 3:00pm; Matir Moina (94 minutes, 2002) by Tareque Masud and Catherine Masud of Bangladesh at 5:00pm; Meghe Dhaka Tara (126 minutes, 1960) by Ritwik Ghatak of India at 7:00pm.

The Chinese ambassador, Chai Xi, on Saturday said Sino-Bangladesh friendly relations and cooperation would be further consolidated with joint efforts from Dhaka and Beijing.
   ‘I sincerely hope and believe that with our joint efforts the Sino-Bangladesh friendly relations and cooperation will be further consolidated and enhanced in the benefits of our two nations,’ he said adding that Bangladesh-China relationship has stepped into a new era of advancement.
   The outgoing Chinese ambassador made the remarks at a reception hosted by the Awami League international affairs secretary and Bangladesh chief representative to Boao Forum, Syed Abul Hossain, at Sonargaon Hotel in the evening.
   Xi said he had tried his best to further improve the cooperation between the two countries, pushing the annual trade volume to almost double up to $3 billion.
   The ambassador also mentioned his special efforts to facilitate the establishment of direct air-link between Dhaka and Beijing via Kunming.
   He also recalled the visits by heads of two governments in 2005 resulting in establishment of Sino-Bangladesh Comprehensive Partnership of Cooperation featuring long-term friendship, equality and mutual benefits.
   Hossain, who is also the managing director of SAHCO International Limited, said Xi’s tenure coincided with the period when China had come out with $15 billion to be given as economic and technical assistance to neighbouring and developing countries.
   The previous government, he said, could have channeled a portion of this fund.

Both the Awami League and the BNP on Saturday said the current state of emergency should not continue more than 120 days for the interest of the continuation of the country’s hard-earned democracy.
   The AL and BNP also demanded that the interim government announces a timeframe for holding the stalled parliamentary elections as early as possible, said a press release issued by the BBC.
   The BNP central committee member and former commerce minister, Amir Khosru Mahmud Chowdhury, and AL Presidium Member Kazi Zafarullah made the remarks at a discussion titled ‘Bangladesh Sanglap’ at the Bangladesh-China Friendship Conference Centre in the Dhaka city.
   The BBC Bangla Service and the BBC World Service Trust organised the debate programme.
   ‘The state of emergency should not continue more than 120 days according to the constitutional provision and there should have a timeframe for holding the next election’, said Zafarullah, adding that the
   interim government should take necessary steps to hold the election within the stipulated 90 days.
   Amir Khosru said, ‘No government can continue for an indefinite period and the election is a must for democracy,’
   The former commerce minister said apprehension might be created if this government continued for a long time.
   Echoing the remarks made by Khasru and Zafarullah, former adviser to the caretaker government Sultana Kamal termed that the interim government had no policy-making authorities.
   She said the government should make public what they want to do. The immediate former adviser said no interim government should continue for an indefinite period for the continuation of democracy as it could bring about irreparable disaster to the country’s future.
   In reply to a question, both the BNP and AL leaders appreciated the ongoing drive against corrupt people and said alongside the politicians, the corrupt bureaucrats, businessmen and other professionals need to be netted. They also said they were bringing about reforms of their respective party.
   About the proposed internationalisation of the Chittagong sea port, the discussants said it should be modernised through increasing its efficiency in the port management instead of handing it over to any private or international organisation.
   Senior producer of the BBC Bangla Service Kamal Ahmed moderated the discussion.

The government is actively considering addressing the problems of the country’s flourishing poultry sector, the agriculture adviser to the interim government Chowdhury Sajjadul Karim said on Saturday.
   Speaking at the closing session of the three-day fifth international poultry show and seminar at Bangladesh-China Friendship Conference Centre, the adviser said they would hold discussion with the entrepreneurs on priority basis as the sector had already become an integral part of the overall agriculture.
   The government has already formed a five-member committee to identify the problems of the sector and asked them to put forward a recommendation to the government for immediate solution.
   The poultry industry produces 3.2 lakh tonnes of broiler meat annually and about 32 lakh people are directly or indirectly engaged in the sector.
   Discussing the global risk of the sector, the fisheries and livestock adviser CS Karim said, ‘We are strictly monitoring the contamination of avian influenza in the country which is a global threat.’
   The per capita availability of meat is only 21 grams against the daily demand of 120 grams, said Sunil Chandra Gosh, director general of the Department of Livestock Services, while speaking on the occasion.
   Referring to the sector’s achievement, the DG said, ‘The grand parent stock farms are not only saving about 60 lakh dollar annually through producing parent stock chicks, but also earning a significant amount of foreign currency through export.
   In 2006, the five grand parent stock farms produced 24 lakh parent stock chicks, which was 62 per cent of the total supply while 26 crore broiler chicks and 2.5 crore layer chicks have been distributed through the 130 parent stock farms, he added.
   About 107 different local and foreign companies participated in the show, organised by the World’s Poultry Science Association of Bangladesh Chapter, while scientists from 27 countries took part in the seminar.
   WPSA-BB president Moshiur Rahman presided over the concluding session while general secretary MA Saleque, president of the WPSA Professor R Akby and the general secretary Ir PCM Simons and WAPSA Bangladesh chapter vice-president Kaiser Kabir also spoke on the occasion.

Speakers at a discussion on Saturday stressed the need for creating alternative jobs for
   the sex workers before they
   are forced to leave their profession.
   They said it would be tantamount to violation of human rights if sex workers were
   evicted without creating any alternative job opportunity for them.
   The speakers also demanded proper measures to stop criminal activities by the vested quarters in and around the brothels across the country.
   The Sex Workers Network of Bangladesh organised the discussion at the conference room of Dhaka Reporters’ Unity marking International Sex Workers Day.
   Academics, NGO activists, journalists and representatives of the sex workers took part in the discussion.
   Professor HSK Arefeen of anthropology department of Dhaka University said sex workers were nabbed frequently under Public Nuisance Act, which does not befit with their arrest.
   In this regard, he suggested amendment to the existing laws to protect the interest of the sex workers.
   Referring to a number of case studies, he said the recognition of sex workers was a demand of the time.
   ‘I think they are more transparent in their personal life as they do not show any hypocrisy to earn their living like others in the society,’ he pointed out.
   The speakers also felt the urgent need for checking spread of HIV/AIDS and sexually transmitted diseases in the society.
   Sex worker Shahanaz in his speech said, ‘We sell sex in return for money. If we are called sex workers, what about them who sleep with us?’
   Other sex workers also echoed the same and demanded legal recognition of their profession.
   The sex workers also urged the law enforcing agencies to stop repression on sex workers and their children at brothels across the country.
   There are 3,816 registered sex workers at five brothels in Khulna and eight brothels in Dhaka and Barisal, said the organisers.
   Rashida Akhter, Advocate Ruhi Shamad Ara Jhumu, Akhter Jahan Shilpi, Sami Afreen Nilu, Kazi Abu Shahed, among others, spoke on the occasion.

The police on Friday seized more than 200 passports of different people from the office of the Emirates Airlines at Gulshan in Dhaka picked up two of its employees in this connection.
   The employees were released under the custody of airlines officials.
   The police said the Special Branch raided the airlines office on the Gulshan Avenue on information on the seizure of the passport of a Bangladeshi jobseeker who was in recent times deported by the Dubai immigration officials.
   Another Bangladeshi was also deported twice by the immigration in Dubai, the police said.
   Raiding the office in the afternoon, the plainclothes policemen seized more than 200 passports and other important documents.
   The passports were supposed to be deposited with the immigration, a senior police officer said.
   A case was filed with the police against the two Emirates employees in connection with the incident.

Fifteen workers were injured when a cylinder of ammonia gas exploded at an under-construction building at Rupsha upazila in Khulna Sunday afternoon.
   Police said the incident occurred at the under-construction building of Jalalabad Fish Feed Companyat 2:00pm.
   The injured were admitted to Khulna Medical College Hospital.
   Of them, the condition of Rowshan Akhtar, Mintu, Khaleq and Zahid was stated to be critical, hospital sources said.

The chief adviser to the interim government, Fakhruddin Ahmed, will visit Barisal today and hold talks with high officials of the division.
   According to itinerary, the chief adviser will arrive in Barisal by helicopter at 10:05am and leave for Dhaka at 3:55pm.
   Meanwhile, the Barisal Chamber of Commerce and Industry has decided to place 13-point demands at the meeting. The demands include extension of time limit of closing shops up to 8:00pm, rehabilitation of slum dwellers, formation of Barisal development authority, construction of bridges at Mawa and Bekutia, resumption of Biman flight, development of Kuakata tourist zone and supply of natural gas from Shahbajpur gas field in Bhola.

Nobel laureate Muhammad Yunus went to Islamabad Saturday on a three-day visit to Pakistan.
   The Pakistani prime minister, Shaukat Aziz, has invited the Nobel laureate, being acclaimed across the world for trailblasing in micro-credit, to visit his country.
   According to a Grameen Bank release, he will return on March 7 from his latest trip in a series since he received the Nobel peace prize last December.
   During this 3-day visit, Yunus is expected to meet with the president, Pervez Musharraf, and the prime minister, Shaukat Aziz, in Islamabad as well as other senior government officials.
   He will be given reception by the State Bank of Pakistan in Karachi, where an interactive session will be held with commercial banks, micro-finance institutions and members of the business community.
   As per his tour programme, Yunus will also deliver a public lecture today (Sunday).
   He has been invited over the years to provide advice to the government of Pakistan for the establishment of a sound micro-finance sector in the country.
   It has resulted in the establishment of a nationwide bank in Pakistan as a replica of the Grameen Bank system, Pakistan Poverty Alleviation Fund and legislation for micro-finance operations in that country.