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The government has decided to engage all commercial banks and mobile phone operators in collecting utility bills to ease the payment system that now keeps customers standing in queues for hours at selected bank counters.
   ‘Concerned ministries have agreed on the idea of paying utility bills through mobile phones to ensure hassle-free service to consumers,’ said a high official of the finance ministry.
   The utility agencies will communicate with six mobile phone companies for developing an integrated system for smooth payment of utility bills.
   An inter-ministry meeting at the finance ministry on Thursday approved the proposals for payment of telephone, electricity, gas, water and other bills through branches of all state-owned and private banks as well as mobile phones.
   Meeting sources said the utility agencies would pay service charges to banks and mobile phone operators for bill collections.
   According to the proposals of the government’s utility agencies, customers can pay monthly bills through pre-paid cards of the agencies concerned or depositing extra money with mobile phone bills for adjustments to utility bills.
   Currently, banks are not given any service charges for collecting bills for the government agencies, but they are allowed to keep the deposits for a certain period.
   Under the existing arrangements, some branches of state-owned banks accept telephone bills, while some collect electricity, gas or water bills, requiring the customers to rush to a number of banks and spend hours in long queues every month.
   The Thursday’s meeting decided that payments of utility bills could be made at all branches of both state-owned and private banks.
   Managing director of state-owned Agrani Bank Limited Syed Abu Naser Bukhtear Ahmed said the state-owned banks would make extra efforts if the utility agencies provided one per cent service charge for bill collection.
   Utility bills may be cleared by pre-paid cards of the agencies concerned through mobile phones, he added.

Human rights organisation Odhikar on Friday demanded that an independent authority should be instituted to investigate the extrajudicial killing by law enforcers. It also demanded an immediate end to such killing.
   The rights group made the demands in its monthly report on the state of human rights published on Friday.
   Such an authority should be civilian in nature with powers to receive complaints, investigate and order appropriate punishment, including recommendation for damages and reparations to the victims of security forces, said the report.
   The report said the situation of extrajudicial killings had taken a bad turn in July. Not only more than one was killed every two days, but non-violent persons, with strong political views, were also killed despite appeals for proper legal recourse.
   ‘With the killing of Purba Banglar Communist Party (ML-Red Flag) chief Dr Tutul in so-called crossfire, extrajudicial killing took a new turn, putting in danger anyone holding certain political beliefs,’ the report said.
   According to the report, 16 people were allegedly killed by the law enforcement agencies in July. Of them, seven were reportedly killed in custody.
   It was reported the Rapid Action Battalion had killed seven persons while the police killed nine. All the 16 were killed in ‘crossfire, ‘encounter’ or ‘gunfight’ with lawmen.
   The victims include two leaders of Purba Banglar Communist Party (ML–Red Flag), a member of Purba Banglar Communist Party, a member of Purba Banglar Communist Party (Janajuddha) and a member of the Bangladesh Nationalist Party, the report said.
   Demanding immediate and effective initiatives to stop killing, injuring and abduction of Bangladeshis by India’s Border Security Force, the report said eight persons, including two Bangladesh Rifles personnel, were killed by the Indian border guards in July.
   In addition, six were injured and two were abducted by the Indian guards. Three incidents of looting of cattle and a boat and one incident of ‘push-in’ (into Bangladesh) of 25 people took place.
   ‘The government must end its practice of intimidating journalists and must ensure freedom of expression,’ the report said, adding 11 incidents of human rights violation against journalists were recorded in July.
   Three journalists were injured, two were assaulted, and charges were framed in an extortion case against a journalist in Rajshahi.
   Journalist Abdul Mannan Bhuiyan, editor of a local newspaper in Lakshmipur, was sent to jail in an extortion case. Four incidents of threat were also recorded, the report said.
   According to the Odhikar report, 27 women and girls were raped. Of them, 14 were adults and 13 were girls. Out of the 27, six women and three girls were reportedly killed after being raped.
   In one of the cases, a 14-year-old girl was raped by Abdul Gafur, a member of the Rapid Action Battalion, in Narayanganj, the report said.

The expelled secretary general of BNP Abdul Mannan Bhuiyan on Friday welcomed the High Court verdict allowing political parties to contest the local government polls.
   Bhuiyan, also former minister for local government, said that the court ruling was a ‘right’ verdict as everybody knew that activists of different political parties contested the polls hiding their political identities because of the electoral rules.
   ‘Local government polls are big events for the grassroots people and the parties cannot afford to ignore them. So, involvement of political parties in such elections cannot be forbidden by laws’, he said and hoped that after being elected to local government bodies those political activists would maintain neutrality.
   The High Court bench of Justice ABM Khairul Haque and Justice M Abu Tariq on Thursday scrapped the Election Commission rules that had barred political parties from participating in local government polls terming the rules unconstitutional and void.
   Talking to newsmen at his Gulshan flat, Bhuiyan confidently said there would be no rift in the BNP once the party chairperson Khaleda Zia was released from jail.
   Asked about his reform proposals that suggested barring a person from serving as party chief for more than two terms, Bhuiyan said that their [splinter group] move was nothing final but a mere proposal.
   ‘The councillors at the party’s council session will determine the fate of the proposal.
   And all these can happen after release of Khaleda Zia’, he said.
   ‘We had placed the reform proposals to make the party stronger and more acceptable to the people.
   The party chairperson too favours necessary reforms in the party’, he added.
   ‘The BNP will surely be
   united again, contest the polls and win a sweeping victory’, he said.
   Khaleda Zia had expelled Bhuiyan and Ashraf Hossain the night before her arrest on September 3, 2007 for their ‘anti-party activities in the name of reforms’.
   Bhuiyan announced the 19-point reform proposal on June 25, 2007 and suggested election of the party chief by direct ballot of councillors for a three-year term.

World Breastfeeding Week 2008 began in the country on Friday with a call for greater support for mothers in to achieving the gold standard of infant feeding.
   The theme of the week this year is ‘Mother Support: Going for the Gold’. In conjunction with the Olympics in August, World Breastfeeding Week 2008 calls for greater support for mothers in achieving the gold standard of infant feeding: breastfeeding exclusively for six months, and providing appropriate complementary foods with continued breastfeeding for up to two years or beyond.
   Bangladesh Breastfeeding Foundation organised the inaugural ceremony, like the previous years, at the Institute of Child and Mother Health, Matuail of Jatrabari. Representatives of various international organisations and government authorities attended the programme.
   It will also organise workshops, seminars and debate in different parts of the country to help enhance mother supports for breastfeeding, foundation officials said.
   The adviser of the foundation, Professor MQK Talukder, was the chief guest at the inaugural session also attended by representative of UNICEF Bangladesh Carel de Rooy, UNFPA Bangladesh representative Pornchai Suchitta and country director of Save the Children, USA Margarita Clark.
   Talukder stressed the need for scaling up mother support groups throughout the country for the sake of breastfeeding campaign as a child breastfed properly gets quality health and remains free from different diseases.
   Carel said exclusive breastfeeding was a challenge for many mothers throughout the world. The rate of exclusive breastfeeding in Bangladesh is still as low as 43 per cent while early initiation of breastfeeding (within the first hour of delivery) is only 24 per cent, he said.
   ‘If all newborns in the country were to be breastfed within one hour of birth, an estimated 28,100 neonatal deaths could be averted annually,’ he said.
   Margarita said it was evident that support to mothers was the key to helping them to initiate breastfeeding within the first hour of birth and to maintain exclusive breastfeeding up to six months of age.
   Her organisation provide support to the Bangladesh Breastfee-ding Foundation all round the year, she said and called upon all to join the breastfeeding campaign for the sake of newborn and all the young children in the country.
   Pornchai said, ‘We all need to increase support to mothers in achieving the gold standard of infant feeding: breastfeeding initiation within one hour; breastfeeding exclusively for the first six month, and continue breastfeeding together with feeding other appropriate complementary foods for up to two years.’
   Bangladesh Breastfeeding Foundation chairperson SK Roy said without eliminating the malnutrition problem of mothers, child mortality rate could not be controlled.
   Officials of the foundation, officials of the Directorate General of Health Services, physicians and scouts of different schools also took part in the inaugural ceremony.

About 25-30 lakh tonnes of rice are eaten up by rats in fields and at farmhouses while a large quantity of the crop is lost to insect pests and diseases annually, said experts at press conference on Friday.
   Apart from destroying crops, rodents and vectors spread viruses and diseases such
   as hantavirus, plague, leptospirosis and rat typhus which often affect human population in Asia, they said at the
   press conference organised by Aid-Comilla at the Reporters Unity.
   Rats are the number one enemy of Asian farmers as
   they destroy millions of tonnes of rice in the major rice producing countries of south
   and south-east Asia, including Bangladesh, the experts
   said adding that effective rat control could increase the
   production of the crop significantly.
   Aid-Comilla, with technical assistance of the UK Department for International Development has undertaken a three-year project for 2008-2011, on rodent management for rural communities.
   The Tk 3.84 crore project is being implemented in rural areas of Comilla, Netrakona, Kushtia and Satkhira districts.
   Under the project about 20,000 farmers will be trained in tackling the problem of rat attacks on crop fields.
   Rokeya Begum Shafali, executive director of Aid-Comilla, said that the project, undertaken after field-level research conducted in 2002-2006 in Chhagalnaiya upazila of Feni district, had been successfully implemented the rat control technology there.
   Some 3,000 farmers in the district have trained in rodent management under the project, she added.
   ‘The measures undertaken by the government for rat control have proved half-hearted. We have to concentrate on biological control of rat reproduction’, she said.
   Dr Steven R Belmain of Natural Resource Institute of the University of Greenwich in the United Kingdom, field operation manager of the project, Nazira Q Kamal, and training manager Shantosh Kumar Sarker attended the briefing.

World Bank on Friday approved a $130.7 million IDA credit to Bangladesh for improvement of the quality of the country’s secondary education system.
   The credit from the Inter-national Development Associa-tion, the WB’s concessionary arm, has 40 years to maturity with a 10-year grace period and it carries a 0.75 per cent service charge, said a press release of the bank.
   The ‘Secondary education quality and access enhancement project’ will finance activities in 121 upazilas aiming at improving education quality and poverty-targeted stipends and tuition to girls and boys to increase access and retention.
   Although Bangladesh has recorded impressive achievements in education significant challenges still remain the sector. Completion rate at the secondary level is as low as 20 per cent and many poor children, especially boys, still have no access to secondary school , the press release added.
   Female enrollment in the secondary schools increased from 1.1m in 1991 to 4.4m in 2006 after a WB financed scheme ‘Female secondary school assistance project’ was launched in 1993, it said.
   Schools and families received cash incentives under this project to keep girls in secondary school through completion.
   ‘Achievement of high quality secondary education is a critical foundation for higher levels of education and skills which are likely to have a significant impact on economic development’, said the WB country director for Bangladesh, Xian Zhu.
   ‘This project will ensure that poor children are not left out of the secondary school system. Importantly, it will also enhance secondary teacher and student performance, and make schools more accountable to the community.’
   The project aims at strengthening the institutional capacity of the ministry of education both at central and local levels and establishing an effective monitoring and evaluation system.

A candidate for the post of Ward 25 councillor in the August 4 elections to the Khulna City Corporation elections allegedly assaulted the corporation’s revenue officer Sk M Tasaduzzaman at Basupara on Friday for not working on his behalf.
   Local residents said the candidate, Rashed, also the sitting councillor for the ward, had pressured Tasaduzzaman to carry out electoral campaign for him and as he refused to work, Rashed assaulted Tasaduzzaman and threatened him with dire consequences.
   About a hundred residents of Basupara at a briefing at the Khulna Press Club alleged Rashed continued threatening them with dire consequences if they did not work and cast vote for him.
   The Khulna election office said they had received an allegation of the Ward 25 residents against Rashed in connection with code of conduct violation. He said the matter was under investigation.

Jatiya Samajtantrik Sramik Jote leaders on Friday urged the government to form a wage commission for the privately owned mills and factory workers and reopen the closed industries immediately.
   Referring to the hike in prices of essential commodities, the labour leaders said that the low paid workers were facing tough time to run their families.
   They were addressing a meeting with the workers of the Dhaka city unit of the party at its central office.
   Chaired by labour leader Abdul Latif Miah, the meeting was addressed, among others, by the president of the organisation Abul Khaer Sajjad, general secretary Abdul Khalek, and joint secretary Abdur Razzak.

A construction worker was killed and two others were injured as the roof of a building at the Kalapara radar station in Patuakhali collapsed Friday morning.
   The deceased was Gaffar Ahmed, 15. The injured are Gaffar’s father Anwar Hossain, 40, and Nizam Uddin, 30.
   Anwar was sent to Sher-e-Bangla Medical College Hospital in Barisal in a critical condition and Nizam Uddin was admitted to Kalapara Health Complex.
   Witnesses said the radar
   station authorities sold the building to Md Hanif Munsi, a contractor of Barisal, at
   auction. On the day, the contractor engaged a number of workers to demolish the
   building.
   At one point, the roof caved in, killing Gaffar on the spot.
   The fire service people from Amtali in Barguna rescued the injured from under the building.
   Local residents said the contractor did not take any steps to ensure the safety of the workers.
   A case was filed with the Kalapara police in this connection.

A woman was killed allegedly by her husband and his other wife inSirajganj early Friday.
   The deceased was identified as Golapi Das, 40, of Mirpur Halderpara village under the municipal area.
   Quoting local people, the police said Laxmon Das and his second wife Shushmita had severely beaten up Golapi and strangulated her on the spot.
   Informed by the locals, the police recovered the body and sent it to the Sirajganj General Hospital morgue for a postmortem examination.
   The police also arrested Laxmon and Shusmita from the spot.
   Noor Nabi, the second officer of the sadar police station, said thearrested confessed to their involvement in the killing.
   A case was filed in this connection.

Sociologists at a conference in Dhaka on Friday said that military rule could never be an alternative to rule of law.
   At the biennial conference of Bangladesh Sociological Association, the speakers said that the country was at a critical juncture and raising the consciousness level of general masses was the only way out of the crisis.
   ‘Military rule is no alternative to rule of law…Today the country is at a crossroads… and it is only by raising the consciousness level of the general masses that this impasse can be overcome,’ read the keynote paper presented by KAM Saaduddin, a professor of sociology at Dhaka University. The title of the keynote papers was ‘Martial Law, Rule of Law and Legitimacy: A Sociological Analyses of Bangladesh Politics’.
   Referring to military coups since 1958, Saaduddin said the intervention by the army following the events leading to January 11, 2007 changeover was ‘of a different type’ since a combination of civil and military powers gained almost universal acclaim in the beginning.
   ‘However, the selection of the head of the caretaker government remains a great surprise to many as it was the furthest conceivable bid from Professor Iajuddin Ahmed, who himself was holding that post, to abdicate in favour of a retired World Bank director and former governor of Bangladesh Bank with no political background at all,’ he said.
   The association’s president FR Khan, who chaired the conference, said that democracy was a system of government with elaborate institutional framework reinforced by rule of law and by no ways military rule could be an alternative to the rule of law.
   FR Khan who is also a professor of sociology at Rajshahi University thanked the keynote speaker and urged sociologists to work for socio-economic reforms.
   Dhaka University vice-chancellor Professor SMA Faiz, who spoke as a special guest at the conference, said ‘I have full support for the spirit of the main theme of the keynote paper presented by Saaduddin.’
   ‘All the universities should work together with the society to steer the country in the right direction,’ he said.
   The conference was held at LGED auditorium in Dhaka and attended by about 500 delegates.
   Speaking as the chief guest at the conference, the education adviser Hossain Zillur Rahman said ‘I am encouraged to see that the keynote speaker has picked up a bold topic for discussion.’
   ‘We have been in the political process in the past and we have also witnessed the drastic decline in the quality of politics’, the adviser said and called on the sociologists to identify the reasons and suggest a way out.
   AI Mahbub Uddin Ahmed, Sardar Aminul Islam, Monirul I Khan, Shahdat Hossain, Sadeka Halim and ASM Amanullah, all professors of sociology at Dhaka University, discussed on the keynote paper. Mohammad Abdul Ghani, professor of sociology at Shahjalal University of Science and Technology and Shafiqul Haque Chowdhury, president of non-governmental organisation ASA, also spoke at the conference.

The police re-arrested former Awami League minister Engineer Mosharraf Hossain from the gate of Kashimpur jail in Gazipur on Friday.
   The Joydevpur police arrested the AL leader from Chittagong immediately after he was released on bail.
   They took him to the Joydevpur police station, and then to Gazipur court on charges of violating Emergency Powers Rules by holding a rally.
   Gazipur chief judicial magistrate’s court rejected a bail plea by Mosharraf and ordered him back to Kashimpur jail.
   Witnesses said more than 50 party leaders, workers and relatives had earlier greeted the AL leader him with flowers as he came out of the jail gate at about 2:15pm.
   A smiling Mosharraf advanced a few steps, when Gazipur district additional police super Jihadul Kabir approached him and said: ‘Sir, you will have to go with us.’
   Mosharraf obliged and was driven away in a police vehicle.
   Joydevpur police sub-inspector Nazmul Islam Khan said he had filed a general diary against the former minister on charge of violating the Emergency Powers Rules.