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Petrobangla and the Energy Division will jointly organise a symposium on ‘Mining and Community Livelihoods in Bangladesh’ on April 21, apparently to quell the ongoing controversy over coal-mining issues.
   The special assistant to the chief adviser for the power, energy and mineral resources ministry, M Tamim, will inaugurate the daylong symposium to be held at the Petrobangla’s headquarters and attended by experts and economists from home and abroad.
   Dhaka University’s Professor Badrul Imam, who was a member of the government-formed advisory committee to finalise the draft of the coal policy, will present a paper on ‘Geological Condition and Coal Mining in Bangladesh’ at the symposium.
   Rajshahi University’s Professor Chowdhury Kamruzzaman will make a presentation on the ‘Potentiality of Barapukuria Coal Field, Present Extraction Method and Future Possibilities’, and Australian expert David Laurence will present a paper on ‘Triple Bottom Line and Mining’.
   The Bangladesh Economic Association’s general secretary, Professor Abul Barakat, will present a paper on ‘Livelihood Implications of Coal Mining: Some Ideas on Socio-Economic Costs and Benefits’, and Dr Assaduzzaman of the Bangladesh Institute of Development Studies will make a presentation on ‘Economic, Social and Environmental Concerns in Developing Coal Resources in Bangladesh’. An Australian expert of Indian origin, Kuntala Lahiri Dutt, will present a paper on ‘The Importance of Community Engagement in Mining’.
   Energy secretary Mohammad Mohsin and Petrobangla’s chairman Jalal Ahmed will address the inaugural session. SM Wahid-uz-Zaman, secretary to the Ministry of Science, Information and Communication Technology, will chair the first session, and Kazi M Aminul Islam, secretary to the chief adviser, will preside over the second session.
   Sources in the Energy Division said that Tamim had recently held a preparatory meeting on the symposium at the Energy Division with concerned officials.
   They said that the Energy Division wanted to hold the symposium on the mining issue as passionate debates have been going on in the country for the last two years over what mining method the country should use for coal extraction.
   The Bangladesh Economic Association’s president, Quazi Khaliquzzaman Ahmed, the National Committee to Protect Oil, Gas, Mineral Resources, Power and Port’s member secretary Anu Muhammad and Dhaka University’s Professor MM Akash, who have been extremely vocal on coal mining issues, will be invited to the symposium, they said.
   ‘Basically the symposium will discuss the environmental issues and mitigation affects of mining, including coal and hard rock mining. The symposium is not for promoting any mining method, rather it will try to create a common field among all the disputants,’ said a source.
   He said that the Energy Division had asked Petrobangla to stage more programmes on mining issues.

Wildlife, marine life, birds and other species in the areas declared ecologically critical remain threatened because of indiscriminate exploitation and pollution of natural resources.
   People are still unaware of restriction on movement and other prohibitions in the eight critical areas such as Cox’s Bazar-Teknaf beach, Sonadia Island, St Martins Island, Hakaluki Haor, Tanguar Haor, Marjaat Baor, Gulshan-Baridhara Lake and a large portion of Sundarban.
   The government declared them critical areas in 1999 under the Environment Conservation Act 1995, observing special need for conservation to preserve ecology and biodiversity.
   Although a government project is continuing on ecology and biodiversity management in four of such areas — Cox’s Bazar-Teknaf beach, Sonadia Island, St Martins Island, and Hakaluki Haor — in cooperation with the UNDP-Global Environment Facility, but indiscriminate exploitation of natural resources is continuing in the places.
   The world’s longest Cox’s Bazar-Teknaf beach is the habitat of around 200 types of local and 81 type of migratory birds, including globally threatened birds and varieties of marine lives and about 90 species of wildlife.
   St Martins Island is a rare coral island which has about 153 varieties of fauna, 157 varieties of mangrove, 66 kinds of coral, 187 types of bivalves, 240 types of marine fish and other marine lives.
   Sonadia Island has coastal mangrove and other marine and wildlife. Hakaluki and Tanguar are the two largest habitats of local varieties of fish and migratory and local birds.
   According to scientists, such ecologically critical areas are the habitats of many species that are considered either threatened or rare species.
   An official of the coastland and wetland biodiversity management project said many people, even educated, had no idea of what should not be done in such critical areas.
   Tree felling, fishing, disturbing and polluting the natural habitat of wildlife and marine life and birds are still going on.
   The Environment Conservation Act strictly prohibits activities such as hunting, collecting corals, bivalves, and turtles, destruction of the habitat of flora and fauna, activities that might harm fish and other aquatic lives, dumping wastes and establishment of industries that might pollute land, water and air.
   Violations of the prohibitions are punishable with a maximum of 10 years’ punishment or a fine of Tk 10 lakh or both.
   Officials of the coastland and wetland biodiversity management project said they protested against a walkathon and sports programme scheduled to be held on the Cox’s Bazar-Teknaf beach this year.
   The project director, Jafar Siddiqi, said there were many other places which should also be declared critical areas, but it was not possible for the government now to do so for shortage of resources and technology.
   He said they were working to develop a total management plan of the critical areas in addition to conservation of biodiversity and sustainable use of resources.
   Jafar said the drafting of ‘ecologically critical areas rules’ was under way. ‘We hope that the draft will be completed and sent to the law ministry by this year for final approval.’
   Ainun Nishat, country representative of the IUCN-The World Conservation Union, suggested introduction of eco-tourism in ecologically critical areas and other ecologically threatened areas.
   He also suggested community-based management of such areas to make local people aware of sustainable use of resources.
   The director of the coastland and wetland biodiversity management project, however, said they had initiated to draft an eco-tourism guideline with the help of other departments, including the Bangladesh Parjatan Corporation.
   Formation of village conservation groups to manage the resources of such areas is one of the activities of this project, he said.

The Anti-Corruption Commission has formed a task force to investigate allegations of corruption in the Bangabandhu Sheikh Mujib Medical University.
   The university vice-chancellor has been urged to assist the three-member task force, the commission’s director general Hanif Iqbal said at a briefing Thursday.
   ‘The task force will start its work at the BSMMU on Sunday and it has already communicated with the authorities concerned,’ he said. The task force, headed by ACC director Major Maksudur Rahman, was formed as part of the commission’s drive against institutional corruption in the service sector.
   Assistant director Nasim Anwar and assistant inspector Khandaker Akheruzzaman would assist the director in probing into BSMMU graft. The commission wrote a letter to the BSMMU vice chancellor with a request for allocating a room and giving secretarial service.
   The task force will probe into the allegations of misappropriation of money in hospital procurements— including X-ray and laboratory equipment.
   ‘It will also look into corruption and irregularities in tender process,’ the DG said at the media briefing.
   Earlier, the commission engaged a four-member special team to probe deep into rampant corruption in Roads and Highways Department. About the progress of investigation into the Roads and Highways Department, Hanif said the committee probed into 11 projects and would submit investigation reports soon.

Academics expressed their reservations about the rationales behind the demands for inclusion of everything — from goat rearing to corruption — in the school curriculums.
   Speaking at a seminar in Dhaka Thursday, they observed that a tendency was seen in a section of people to overburden school textbooks with a raft of issues, which, they warned, would rather make curriculums boring for children.
   In recent years, school textbooks have seen issues like corruption, AID/HIV and goat rearing, they listed.
   Economist Professor Muzaffer Ahmed said everything should not be included in the main course.
   ‘Things like disaster management, corruption etc. should be included in rapid readers. Civil defence drill was practiced in our schools during the British rule before 1947 and this is absent now-a-days,’ he said.
   ‘Education and certificate are two different things. People have more interest in getting certificates than education in our country,’ added Prof Muzaffer.
   Former vice-chancellor of Dhaka University Professor Moniruzzaman Miah said school curriculum was becoming heavy with inclusion of new things almost every year.
   The tendency of including new topics every year in the school curriculum will not bring any good for quality education, he felt.
   Advancing Public Interest Trust and weekly magazine Saptahik with support from ActionAid organised the seminar, titled `Disaster and Education’ at the National Press Club.
   Saptahik editor Golam Mortoza moderated the discussion while director (administration) of Disaster Management Bureau, Abu Sadeque and country director of ActionAid Bangladesh Farah Kabir also spoke.

At least five people were injured as locals and relatives, enraged at the death of a woman in childbirth, attacked a maternity clinic in the city’s south Mugdapara area early Thursday.
   The victim’s family and locals blamed wrong treatment for the death of Swapna Begum, 20, but the duty doctor claimed the patient died from sudden cardiac complications.
   Wife of Solaiman Mia, Swapna underwent a caesarean done by Dr Shamima Khatun and gave birth to a son at Nagar Matri Sadan, run by Dhaka City Corporation, Tuesday night.
   ‘After the operation, the physician told us both the mother and the baby were out of danger. As we failed to give Tk 8,500, the doctor again took her to operation theatre and referred her to DMCH, where she was declared dead at around 1:30 am Thursday,’ Anisul Haque, a relative of the victim said.
   Dr Shamima denied the allegations of wrong treatment or negligence.
   ‘The caesarean was successful, but the patient’s condition worsened Wednesday night as she got a cardiac arrest, and we had to refer her to Dhaka Medical College Hospital for better treatment,’ she told New Age.
   ‘We were not told beforehand that she was a cardiac patient… Every doctor wants to save life of a patient at any cost,’ Shamima said.
   As news of Swapna’s death spread in the neighbourhood, hundreds of local people equipped with rods, hockey sticks and cricket stumps thronged the clinic and shouted demands for arrest and punishment of the doctor.
   At one stage, the angry mob attacked the clinic and vandalised windowpanes, office equipments and furniture of the clinic.
   They also severely beat up and injured two ward boys Ismail Hossain and Kripan Barua, staff member Mohsinul Alam, security guards Mohammad Salam and Zahir Hossain.
   A team of Shabujbagh police rushed to the scene and brought the situation under control at around 3:30 am.
   Duty officer of Shabujbagh police station said Dr Shamima filed a general diary Thursday morning, but none was arrested so far.

A 22-year-old woman and her 10-month-old baby were brutally strangled to death by her husband in Deobhogh Nagbari under Fatullah model police station in Narayanganj on Thursday because he was having an illicit affair with another unmarried woman.
   The name the baby, the unfortunate victim of infanticide, was Rabbi.
   Sohel, the alleged killer, went into hiding immediately after the killing. Police have arrested Lily, Sohel’s girlfriend.
   According to police sources, Sohel of Ghora village of Muktagachha thana in Mymensingh district married Sukhi of Kataya village of Sarishabari in Jamalpur two years back. Sohel was living in a rented house in Jashimuddin of Deobhogh Nagbari area.
   The victim’s mother, Rashida Begum, and sister, Dolly, told newsmen that Sohel was having an illicit love affair with Lily of Deobhogh Water Tank area for long time. Lily was a worker of Rahman Garment in Nayamati area of the town. They further alleged that Sohel had often been seen on rickshaws with Lily.
   Sukhi used to have angry altercations with Sohel and had told him to end the affair many times. Some days before her brutal murder, Sukhi caught Sohel and Lily in flagrante delicto. As a result the altercations became extremely heated.
   For this reason Sohel strangled Sukhi and her baby and fled the spot, said sub-inspector Badrul Alam Khan of Fatullah thana.
   The bodies were sent to Narayanganj Hospital’s morgue for autopsy.

The postal department will sign an agreement with Citibank NA Bangladesh on Sunday to facilitate the bank’s payments through the vast postal network.
   ‘Initially 70 head post office across the country will be used for the service,’ said Mobasherur Rahman, director general of postal department on Thursday.
   If the initiative becomes successful, Citibank would expand its services to upazila level using around 500 post offices.
   The department has more than 10,000 post offices, covering almost every part of the country and employing around 40,000 people.
   Under the deal, a Citibank client will be able to send a maximum of Tk 50, 000 at a time through money order, said the postal chief.
   He, however, said post offices would not go for home deliveries as per the bank’s condition; rather the recipients will have to collect the money from post offices showing national identity cards or passports.
   ‘We have actually brought some changes to the money order system and tailored it to the Citibank’s needs,’ he said.
   Post offices would get a certain percentage of revenue from each money transfer and the rate would be fixed later mutually.
   The postal department is in discussion with some other banks to ink similar types of deal to boost incomes of the state-owned organisation, the DG said.
   The department last year incurred a loss of around Tk 130 crore as it was losing market to private courier services while mobile phones largely reduced people’s habit of writing letters.

The Federation of Bangladesh Chambers of Commerce and Industry’s president, Annisul Huq, said Bangladeshi entrepreneurs were becoming successful in the primary textile sector, belying the prescription of the World Bank for not investing there.
   World Bank experts, just a few years back, strongly argued that investment in textile backward linkage industries in Bangladesh would in no way be feasible, Annis recalled, while speaking at a seminar in the city on Thursday.
   ‘We see that local entrepreneurs have set up hundreds of backward linkage units and these are highly feasible and profitable,’ said Annis, who is also a textile entrepreneur from apparel sub-sector.
   The Bangladesh Textile Mills Association organized the seminar on the ‘Present Status of the Primary Textile Sector in Bangladesh and the Way Ahead’.
   The seminar, presided over by the association’s president Abdul Hai Sarker, was addressed, among others, by Mustafa Abid Khan, the joint chief of the Bangladesh Tariff Commission.
   In his keynote presentation Abid Khan said that local entrepreneurs installed 6.2 million spindles by the end of 2007, nearly three times the 2.352 million installed in 2002.
   He pointed out that although this was far from reaching self-sufficiency, increased investments in backward linkage industries have greatly helped knitwear exporters, with maximum addition of local value, to grow robustly.
   He also cited the gradual increase of the utilization of the general system of preference (GSP) in woven garments as a success of the primary textile sector.
   Abid suggested that entrepreneurs should maintain the growth in the primary textile sector with a view to continue enjoying duty-free and quota-free market access.

Samajik Protirodh Committee, a platform of forty social and development organisations, on Thursday demanded cancellation of the review committee on National Woman Policy 2008.
   It placed five-point demands to the government, seeking rejection of the review committee report, embargo on political activities in religious institutions and upholding of equal rights of men and women declared in the constitution, said a press release.
   The committee at its meeting Thursday also asked the government to clarify its stand on the latest women policy and elaborate on the programmes to implement it.
   Hamida Hossain chaired the meeting, which was addressed, among others, by Mahila Parishad general secretary Aysha Khanam, Hiren Pandit of Swakhharata Abhijan, Shahnaj Sumi of Nari Progoti Sangha, Habibur Rahman of CARE Bangladesh, Umme Salma of Concern Worldwide, Rokeya Jahan Reba of Protyay.
   The committee will hold a citizens’ rally at the Central Shaheed Minar at 3.00 pm on April 25.

Pabna jail superintendent and two guards were on Thursday accused in a case of taking Tk 1 lakh as bribe from Bera municipality officials.
   Jail guard Akteruzzaman filed the case with Pabna Sadar thana. It said jail subedar Ishaq and guard Azizul in connivance with superintendent Rezaul Karim allowed the accountant and engineer of Bera municipality to meet municipal chairman Abdul Baten in the jail after taking Tk 1 lakh as bribe from them.
   Jail super Rezaul Karim declined to comment.

A probe committee on Thursday identified three reasons for Wednesday’s train-bus collision at Rajbari level-crossing in Kalihati upazila that killed 17 people and injured 36 others.
   In its report, the committee said the two gate men, Habibur Rahman and Chandan Kumar, did not pull down the crossbar of the level-crossing as they were asleep when the train came in, smashing the bus.
   The two other reasons are inoperative signalling system and irregularities by the employees, including the two gate men, who were recruited under master roll.
   The additional district magistrate, KM Tariqul Islam, submitted the report with two suggestions — regular monitoring of the signals after their repair and making the employees recruited under master roll accountable by bringing their services under revenue.