THE Primary Education Advocacy Group pleaded for a flexible school timing as per community demand and change in the school calendar for the students living in haor and low-lying areas in Netrakona.
   The Primary Education Advocacy Group, supported by Netrakona Sabalamby Unnayan Samity, a local NGO, and funded by Commonwealth Education Fund, submitted these recommendations to the director general of National Academy for Primary Education, deputy commissioner of Netrakona, district primary education officer, UNO of sadar upazilas and upazila education officers recently.
   The Primary Education Advocacy Group has been working for quality primary education through capacity building of the community.
   The group said the people of the haor areas struggle for existence during flood for about four months in a year. The children cannot go to their schools because most of them become affected by flood. The schools, which are not damaged by flood, are used as flood shelters, it mentioned.
   For this reason the number of school dropouts is quiet alarming in Netrakona, the group noted.
   It further said that the students of haor areas do not get quality education as the teachers remain busy out their schools for a certain period of time during boro farming.
   The group stressed the need for minimising school timing according to seasonal barriers.
   The advocacy group is of the view that if the flexible school timing is fixed in accordance with the need of the situation and holidays are fixed as per community demand, the students of the low lying areas will get more opportunity to study in schools. The new arrangement will also decrease drop-out rate and improve the quality of education of the students, it maintained.

AT LEAST five persons were killed and 25 injured in separate road accidents in Comilla and Mymensingh on Sunday.
   The Comilla correspondent of New Age reports that three persons, including a minor boy, were killed in separate accidents on the Dhaka-Chittagong Highway at Baropara in Daudkandi upazila.
   Among the dead two were identified as Zakir Hossain, 32, of village Angawara and his nephew Hasanuzzaman alias Hasan, 17, under the same upazila.
   The police and witnesses said a Dhaka-bound bus rammed into a Daudkandi-bound microbus at about 4:30am, leaving microbus passenger Zakir Hossain dead on the spot and Hasan critically injured. Hasan later died on the way to hospital in Dhaka.
   In another incident in the same area, an unidentified minor boy, aged around 4, was killed on the spot when a bus knocked him down at about 4:00am.
   In Mymensingh, according to a UNB report, an unidentified person died on the spot and 25 were injured when a Mymensingh-bound bus turned turtle on the Dhaka-Mymensingh Highway at Digarkanda.
   In another accident, a madrassah student, Harmuz, 14, was run over by a bus on Mymensingh-Haluaghat road at Thakorkhai in the morning.

A COLLEGE student died and nine more fell sick after eating puffer fish, locally known as potka, at Kotalipara upazila in Gopalganj on Friday.
   The deceased was a college student, Bikalal Baidya, 25.
   The sick persons, Bikalal’s father Pratap Baidya, 60, mother Urmila Baidya, 50, sister Swapna Baidya, 10, of Tarakandar and his elder sister, Mina Ratna, 25, his brother-in-law, Nikhil Ratna, 48, Nikhil’s brother’s wife Niva Ratna, 55, and Niva’s daughter Shefali Ratna, 24, of Bagar Uttarpar, were shifted to Khulna Medical College Hospital Saturday morning after treatment in a local clinic.
   Two of Bikalal’s cousins — Akash Baidya, 9, and Ashish Baidya, 11 — were admitted to a local clinic in the morning.
   Nikhil, who is a fish trader, bought a puffer fish and sent a half of it to his in-laws’ at Tarakandar. The members of both the families cooked the fish, ate it and fell sick.
   Neighbours sent them to upazila health complex. Bikalal died in the clinic and others, as their condition deteriorated, were shifted to Gopalganj General Hospital and then to Khulna Medical College Hospital.