Main Page «
Front Page «
Metro «
Business «
International «
Sports «
National «
Editorial «
Home «
Timeout «
Letters «

Archive «
Launch Supplement «
Special Supplements «

WHEN former state minister for home affairs Lutfozzaman Babar confessed that he had taken Tk 20 crore as kickback from the Bashundhara Group to allow a murderer to go scot-free, the present inspector general of police lamented, ‘It is a shame that we worked under a corrupt minister.’ But the rot has gone deeper than meets the eye.
   The present government after assuming power felt that something had to be done to reform the police force and make them people friendly. So it was decided that the Police Act 1861 had to be reformed and modified.
   All agree that the conduct of the police is not befitting for a modern democratic nation. It has come to such a pass that people versus police has become the order of the day. The British enacted the police act in order to perpetuate their colonial rule. Their motive was to find out the best way to collect rent and sent to the booty to England safely. For this they did what was necessary for them. They did not even care a little whether their actions did any good to the people or harm them.
   One of the principal tasks of the British police was to suppress the people’s movement for independence. Even after the independence of Bangladesh, the archaic law on police continued to be in effect. It is reported that the present government is seriously considering repeal of the anti-people police act and martial decrees and promulgation of a suitable and appropriate new police ordinance in its place. This ordinance will create an independent police commission. The government should, however, remember that a police commission will not be as easy to set up as the Election Commission or the Public Service Commission was.
   A police commission is a new concept in Bangladesh and many fear that there is every possibility for such a commission to turn into an anti-people outfit in future. Therefore, it is essential that the government seek opinion from civil society and experts before setting up the commission. It is known as ‘legislation by consultative process.’ If this is done in the enactment of police ordinance, then there is the likelihood of its not turning out to be a black law. The colonial police cannot fit into the processes of a democratic society.
   Muhammad Nurul Huda, a former inspector general of police, has said in a recent interview: ‘The appointment of police personnel is a very important thing. It should not be done either by the upper echelons of the police or the Public Service Commission. It would be wise to follow a middle path. The members of civil society, educationists, different professional groups’ representatives, like retired police officials, retired judges, could be integrated into a broad-based committee which will appoint constables in the districts and at the national level will recruit sub-inspectors and sergeants.
   ‘There is no need for additional inspectors general as they are appointed by the Public Service Commission. There are some rules in the establishment division in the appointments and transfers of officials. This can be followed in the case of the police department too. For example, an officer should not be transferred before completion of three years if he is not guilty of any misconduct.’
   According to the draft ordinance, the police will be under the control of the police commission. Experts say there should be a permanent police commission. Its chief could he a former chief justice or a retried judge. They could sit once in two months to investigate irregularities in the police force or pass verdicts on the suitability of police appointment or whether any arbitrariness or excesses have been conducted during the police campaign. It is necessary that a separate pay commission is framed, particularly for the police. But it is fraught with many unanswered questions. It would be prudent to pay them different kinds of allowances. In many countries this is the practice.
   There is political control over the police. It is undesirable. In the old ordinance it was codified that superintendence of the police will lie with the government of the day. But it is neither clear nor transparent where this control will begin and where it will end. It is obvious that politicians will superintend the police. For this, it is necessary to set up committees at various levels. For example, it is essential to bring into being a public security commission which will look into matters relating to the police committing crimes or doing excesses or violating laws of the land. It there is protection of law, the police will cease to be an anti-people outfit.
   In the draft police ordinance, the appointment of polices, their transfer, accountability, punishment for extra-legal offences, conduct and behaviours, preservation of human rights will be taken into consideration. Besides, the police commitment to society will be looked into. There will be clear provisions in this regard. The ordinance will spell out that the police will be governed and act according to laws and rules of the land and not by illegal orders of the government of the day. Some offices of the police will be designated and re-designated in conformity with international practice. The ordinance has been given shape in the light of practices and precedents of Japan, India, Pakistan and Malaysia. The police laws of the United States and Europe have also been reviewed and some of their rules have been given due consideration in the framing of the ordinance.
   The inspector general of police will be conferred financial and administrative powers and the home ministry will look after the overall conduct of the police. The ministry will frame tactics, regulate budget allocations and will give directions from time to time. But the inspector general will determine the sector-wise allocation of funds and the role the police will play in maintaining law and order. According to police sources, the amendment to the police act has been framed in keeping with public interest. The accountability of police has been a top agenda. There are provisions for the summary trial of offending police officials. The chiefs of the Criminal Investigation Department, the Special Branch, the Detective Branch of police and the police academy will be designated as directors general. Newspaper reports say the present superintendent of police will be head of the district. In the case of the large districts the superintendents will be senior police officials. It has been proposed that these officials’ pay scale will be higher than fifth grade.
   The most important aspect of the draft ordinance concerns the establishment of a national police commission, according to the reports. It will consist of 11 members. The home minister will be ex officio chairman of the commission. Four lawmakers – two from the treasury and two from the opposition – will be its members. They will be chosen by the speaker. The home secretary will be a member of the commission while the police chief will be the member-secretary. The members of the police commission will be appointed for three-year terms and they will not be reappointed.
   It is granted that the interim government has been undertaking restructuring of the police force lock, stock and barrel with good intentions. They have proposed a progressive law to make the police serve the people. The country has many good laws, but they are implemented more in breach than in observance. But of all laws, the police laws are the most difficult to reform. The police, as people understand, are the symbols of the state’s coercive power and in most cases the ruling party uses the police as a repressive organ. The police, as a whole, have a negative image among the countrymen. The public perception of the police department is that it turns honest police officials into corrupt persons, and the police serve the politically influential and well-off individuals; those who cannot grease the palm of the police will never get justice. It has also been alleged that some police stations refused to file first information report of victims of a crime because they could not ‘satisfy’ the police officials concerned. The officer-in-charge of a police station in mofussil area behaves like warlords and godfathers. They can even influence election results. Reports have it that a section of police officials has close links with criminals, gangsters and extortionists. There are even allegations that the kickback the police collect from people goes from bottom to top, and that police postings in ‘suitable’ areas require satisfying the proper authorities.
   The Russians say fear has thousand eyes. The public are usually scared of police. Every day there are reports of police irregularities in the newspapers. Death in police custody has become a regular phenomenon. Section 54 of the Code of Criminal Procedure and taking accused persons into remand give enormous power to the police. Even in recent times we have seen mass arrests by the police and it becomes a good business for them. We do not call our country a police state but the enormous power that the police enjoy makes them tinpot dictators.
   Police sympathisers say a constable’s salary is Tk 2,800 and an unskilled labourer’s wage is also Tk 2,800. From this how can we expect to demand clean policeman? Moreover, the policemen stay 11 months out of one year on the job without any contact with their families. They lead a hard life.
   The police reform will take these factors into consideration, it is presumed. Meanwhile the salary of traffic police has been raised 30 per cent. They government has also approved the expenses borne out by the police in the course of investigation of a case. But the police demand for enhancing the 30 per cent hike in their basic salary has not been approved by the government.
   Financial consideration is one thing, but the excesses committed by the police against the people are another.
   This police force of Bangladesh has a rich legacy. They fought bravely against the Pakistan marauders at the Rajarbagh police headquarters on March 25, 1971. The Pakistanis’ priority agenda in ‘Operation Searchlight’ was to seize the Rajarbagh Police Headquarters. Numerous policemen embraced martyrdom.
   But we now write with a feeling of pain and sadness that the rich legacy of the police has been given burial. If the police can change their mindset and only then their past glory can be restored.

Diarrhoeal disease is estimated to be the fourth biggest killer of children aged between 1 and 17. Diarrhoea prevents men and women going to work, resulting in millions of taka a year being lost in terms of income and productivity.
   Much of this is preventable through good sanitation and hygiene practice. Incidence of diarrhoea can be halved by washing hands thoroughly after going to the toilet, or after washing a child’s soiled bottom, and before eating. Being able to use a convenient, clean and properly maintained toilet means the prevention of contamination of living, bathing or playing environments with potentially harmful faecal matter.
   The poorest members of Bangladesh’s society are hardest hit. Poor working mothers who have to sacrifice a day’s pay to stay at home to look after their children, often using scant household resources on life-giving medical care. People living in slums who have to wash in the same water that a latrine empties in to, exposing themselves to waterborne disease. A rickshaw driver or a field worker has no access to a toilet during the day; he or she will have little understanding of the dangers of defecating openly and exposing others around them to the many diseases spread through faecal waste.
   According to UNICEF, the number of children under five dying from diarrhoea every year has been reduced by more than 86 per cent since 1971. Awareness levels about the consequences of poor hygiene practice and the dangers of leaving human excreta open to the environment are on the increase. However, millions of people in Bangladesh still suffer, particularly women, for whom lack of privacy, safety and dignity are often perceived to be far more severe consequences of poor sanitation.
   In 2003 only 33 per cent of the population had access to even a basic toilet facility; the practice of ‘open defecation’ persisted across the country. Where toilets were available, they were often crude, unhygienic structures built over water-bodies. These ‘hanging latrines’ continue to be widely used.
   In Bangladesh the government took a strong lead to improve levels of sanitation coverage. They hosted the South Asia Conference on Sanitation in 2003, attended by nine other countries from the region, which unanimously agreed on a people-centred, community-led approach for sanitation and hygiene development, and committed to accelerating progress in the region. Following the conference, the Bangladesh government established a national task force for sanitation and launched the national sanitation campaign. Every October has been designated the national sanitation month, and continues to be observed at all levels of society and government.
   Bangladesh committed itself to achieving 100 per cent (‘total’) sanitation coverage by 2010. Government organisations, NGOs and donors alike, whilst realising the considerable challenge, have committed themselves to supporting this national target through a wide range of projects and programmes; these primarily target the most vulnerable and the poorest citizens of the country. In rural areas where lack of coverage has been most acute, 20 per cent of the funds from the government’s annual development programme budget for local government have been allocated as sanitation subsidies for the poorest.
   Since SACOSAN, Bangladesh has witnessed a significant increase in availability of sanitation facilities, particularly in rural areas with reports of up to 85 per cent coverage. Whilst such reports need verification, recent surveys have shown a significant move away from ‘open defecation’ and the use of ‘hanging latrines’. It is evident that Bangladesh has made significant progress towards the MDG target of halving those without access to improved sanitation by 2015.
   However, achieving 100 per cent sanitation coverage is more than just having access to a toilet. Toilets, together with good hygiene practice, are the main requirements for a healthy community and a clean environment. Investments are most effective and will have the most lasting impact when they begin at the household and community level.
   2008 is the UN International Year of Sanitation. Bangladesh is in an excellent position to consolidate the progress made towards reaching 100 per cent sanitation coverage and can ensure that its achievements are sustained by realising, throughout all its programmes, that sanitation is about making the conscious decision and effort to change hygiene behaviour.
   There are many excellent examples of good sanitation and hygiene which have been brought about through Government, NGO and community-led activities. Bangladesh has gained international recognition for its pioneering of what has become known as the community-led total sanitation approach. The communities themselves, however poor, are mobilised to put an end to traditional practices of open defecation and are shown how to build and maintain even the most rudimentary type of toilet, sometimes at a cost of no more than Tk 25, which can still provide a clean and smell-free homemade alternative.
   The success of the approach in Bangladesh led the UK Government in 2003 to support a programme of NGO-led interventions in some of the most challenging physical and socio-economic areas of the country, including the Chittagong Hill Tracts. More recently the UK has agreed to support a UNICEF-government of Bangladesh partnership programme working in over half the districts across the country.
   During a recent visit to a slum in the Mohammadpur area of Dhaka, where the UK government has been supporting local NGO programmes through the international NGO WaterAid, a group of community women already managing their own community sanitation facility were able to describe how they were taking responsibility for the operation and maintenance of their sanitation block. ‘We collect from 1 to 6 taka from each member of the local user group,’ said Roxana, a resident community health promoter. The poorest people didn’t have to pay; one of the toilets had even been adapted for use by a number of disabled residents.
   The United Kingdom is pleased to be supporting the government’s commitment to 100 per cent sanitation coverage and is working hard to ensure that the programmes of government, NGOs and other donors in Bangladesh continue to focus their efforts on reaching the poorest and most vulnerable people. The DFID considers that ‘every toilet should be a wanted toilet.’ The UK does not want to help just build toilets; it is committed to helping bring about the changes in sanitation and hygiene practice and put the people of Bangladesh at the centre of the development process, which will break the cycle of diarrhoeal disease – the cycle that prevents poor people from participating effectively in the economic growth of the country.
   Chris Austin is country representative, DFID Bangladesh

EACH year October 10 is observed as World Mental Health Day. From 1992 the World Federation of Mental Health initiated the observance of World Mental Health Day as an opportunity for global mental health education campaign. Every year the federation prepares a campaign theme to give special attention to an important but neglected area related to mental health aspects of understanding or care applicable throughout the world. Each year’s or the previous years’ campaign materials with specific theme of the year can be obtained from the website of the organisation: www.wfmh.org
   The theme of the World Mental Health Day 2007 as organised by the federation is ‘Mental Health in a Changing World: The Impact of Culture and Diversity.’ The main message of this year’s World Mental Health Day’s theme is that we must be sensitive culturally while dealing with mental health issues of the people having different cultural background; and we must be open to cultural diversity and be ready to accept differences in lifestyles, values and culture of the people, who are different, or minority within a large culture dominated by one or two forms of cultural identity. Such issue is quite important in a changing world of today, as we enter into economically globalised world, when migrant population are increasing throughout the world, due to easy flow of capital as well as labour. Living in a large culture with a minority feeling can be a source of stress due to a sense of isolation and difficulty in adjusting with the people of different cultures. Even due to cultural differences, health and mental health care providers might remain insensitive to the needs of the clients manifesting his/her health or mental health problems in a culturally alien manner. Unless the health workers and mental health professionals are trained to understand and interpret the culturally specific or peculiar forms of symptom manifestations, the patients or clients of different cultures might be misunderstood, misdiagnosed or misinterpreted, thus it might lead to denial of access to health and mental health services, causing prolonged and enhanced suffering.
   In Bangladesh, apparently it seems that we live in a homogeneous culture, the Bengali culture. But if we look microscopically, we can see our visible minorities with cultural diversities. We do have Chakma, Marma and other tribal groups living in Chittagong Hill Tracts. We also have Garo, Hajong, Murong and others, whose culture is quite different than the Bengali culture. Our health and growing mental health professions are dominated by Bengali culture, and the knowledge and technologies practised by health and mental health professionals in Bangladesh are still rooted in western modern education. The practice of medical model and pharmacology rooted in western education in the field of mental health care, as it dominates the Bangladesh mental health care scenario, is bound to ignore cultural diversity, and will manifest cultural insensitivity in handling cases coming from diverse culture. For the promotion of quality mental health care we need to curtail the dominance of medical and pharmacological model and integrate more culturally sensitive mental health care models. The psychological and social dimensions have to be incorporated in our mental health-care system. This can only be done by recognising clinical psychology along with psychotherapy and counselling as representing psychological care model and psychiatric social work as representing social care model. As in Bangladesh there are no position of clinical psychologists, except only three, in government-run hospitals, and health-care centres, and similarly, as there are no positions of psychiatric social workers too, our mental health-care system, due to its medical and pharmacological model dominated system, is bound to ignore psychosocial dimensions of mental health care, resulting in suffering of not only culturally diverse population, but also it is going to be insensitive to the psycho-social aspects of the majority people whom we call Bengalis.
   In Bangladesh, for the last twelve years or more, we see that the health ministry with the support from World Health Organisation join in campaigning the issues identified as theme of World Mental Health Day each year as proposed by the World Federation of Mental Health. It has become a single day’s event when our press and media also get sensitised to cover news and stories of the day’s events in Bangladesh. But what change have we been able to achieve so far, beyond such day’s observance, to ensure quality of mental health care, through incorporating integrated system of care, especially involving clinical psychologists and psychiatric social workers up to district and thana/upazila health complex level? We must start stock-taking of our quality of mental health care system, and make a firm commitment to the true mental health care of our nation, by setting a national target of ten or twelve years, that by the year 2020 we no more want to see medical/pharmacological model dominated mental health care system, but will see a balance among medical, psychological and social models, in all aspects of its system of care.
   This year’s theme of World Mental Health Day – ‘Mental Health in a Changing World: The Impact of Culture and Diversity’ – can only be achieved if we learn to become more sensitive to cultural diversity, which can only be achieved through the reduction of medical model’s domination and incorporation of culturally sensitive psycho-social care models thus allowing true diversity in its own mental health care model, which is at present too narrow, and bound to fail to reduce the 100 per cent suffering of the about 14 millions mentally affected population in Bangladesh.
   Can we, therefore, hope to see real reform in our mental health care system soon, by implementing the good words uttered so far in the way of observing World Mental Health Day and will be uttered again this year too?
   Dr Mahmudur Rahman is professor and chairman of the Department of Clinical Psychology, Dhaka University

Malaysia and workers’ misery

Malaysian Prime Minister Abdullah Badawi, ‘assured the chief adviser that his government would look into Bangladeshi workers’ problems with a view to resolving them.’ Badawi added, as reported in the UNB’s NY-datelined item (‘KL assures Dhaka’, New Age, September 28), that ‘Bangladeshi workers were welcome in Malaysia’.
   Barely five days later the New Age front-page headline was ‘Malaysia suspends recruiting Bangladeshi workers’ (October 4) leads one to conclude that one of the two persons has been economical with the truth. Shahjahan Ahmed’s incisive comment (Oct 3) was indeed an eye-opener and is a brave act to call a spade a spade.
   The chief adviser is an honourable man and should do what honourable men do when their honour is irretrievably lost.
   A citizen
   Dhaka

One of my friends got beaten and bruised by some street muggers for not having enough money. He later resented that if he had ‘enough’ money, he might have escaped unhurt. Ironically, the conception of truth commission reminds me of this incident.
   In Bangladesh, the cliché ‘no body (but the people in power) is above law and accountability’ have become a constant for every form of regime. And laws can be twisted for those who have ‘enough’ money. So much for good governance, rule of law, zero tolerance to corruption and bla bla bla.
   Saif
   Dhaka

Next on Quick Comments

a. Govt stops cargo handling at private sector ICD at Ctg: Jobs of several hundred, investment of Tk 1,000 million endangered (New Age, October 9) b. B Chowdhury for forming nat’l consensus govt for 10 years (New Age, October 9) c. Stipend project to extend to secondary schoolboys: 4.5 lakh to get support (New Age, October 9) d. Begunbari project okayed to ease city’s water-logging, traffic congestion (New Age, October 9) e. Deportation of 3 fugitives puts the wind up gangsters hiding in India: Taj, Ibrahim, Selim placed on 7-day remand for interrogation (New Age, October 9) f. Chopper escorting Musharraf crashes, 4 dead (New Age, October 9)