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Many roads and alleys in the Chittagong city plunge into darkness after sunset in the absence of streetlights making the areas a safe haven for muggers and anti-social elements.
   Muggers attack pedestrians and rickshaw passengers taking advantage of darkness on the roads and alleyways, the city people alleged, adding that drug abusers and floating
   sex workers also select the places for their misdeeds after sunset.
   Sources at the Chittagong Metropolitan Police said there were at least 100 spots without streetlights at different places in the city, including Surson Road, Bangla College Road, Central Railway Building Road, Chatteshwari Road, Gani Bakery Crossing, Chittagong Ma O Shishu Hospital Road, Port Connecting Road, Agrabad Access Road, Strand Road and Dhaka Trunk Road.
   Most of the incidents of snatching take place in these spots at night time, CMP sources said, adding that they had requested the Chittagong City Corporation several times to install streetlights along the roads.
   The corporation, however, remained indifferent to the issue, an assistant commissioner of CMP said.
   ‘Darkness in the roads and alleyways is causing minor accidents apart from giving a rise to anti-social and criminal activities,’ he said.
   Abdul Majid, a rickshaw puller hailing from Daudkandi in Comilla, said he, along with his passengers, had fallen victim to muggers three times in the past one month.
   He said the incidents had taken place at Port Connecting Road, Chatteswari Road and Gani Bakery Crossing. ‘People hardly fall prey to muggers at places where there are enough lights.’
   The Chittagong mayor in-charge, M Manjur Alam Manju, said they replaced out of order streetlights with new ones across the city round the year. ‘I am not aware of too many spots without streetlight.’
   ‘I shall take necessary measures to immediately replace the damaged streetlights and ensure their proper maintenance,’ he added.

The Dhaka City Corporation is likely to take decision on the construction of 184 passenger sheds in the city by private-sector organisations this week.
   The DCC chief executive officer, following the technical committee report, signed the proposal for construction of the sheds on Tuesday and sent it to the mayor’s office for final approval, corporation officials said.
   As soon as the mayor approves the proposal, the highest bidding farms will be asked to build the sheds considering the profit of the corporation, they said.
   With the construction of the 184 passenger sheds, the corporation will earn Tk 15 crore under a five-year agreement with the firms, the officials said.
   ‘I could not see any file last week due to my busy schedule. I shall see the file of the proposal for construction of passenger sheds on Sunday and take next course of action in this regard,’ Dhaka mayor Sadeque Hossain Khoka told New Age on Friday.
   The corporation had received the proposal for construction of 184 passenger sheds in the city last year.
   Around 30 corporate houses, advertising farms and other business organisations have applied for construction of the sheds.
   The firms will construct the sheds at their own costs and pay the corporation a certain amount for posting their advertisements, the corporation sources said.
   Some organisations like Grameenphone will post their own advertisement in the passengers sheds while others like advertising farms will sell the sheds to business houses, they said.
   Each shed will be constructed with stainless steel pipes, and some sheds with such steel pipes have already been constructed in Motijheel, Dhaka University, Kalabagan and Mohakhali areas by a couple of private companies, DCC sources said.
   The proposed areas for passenger sheds include Nilkhet, in front of Dhaka College, City College, road No 15 and 27 of Dhanmondi, Kalabagan, Sukrabad, College Road, Asad Gate, Shyamoli, Mirpur Technical crossing, Mirpur Majar Road, Gabtoli bus terminal, in front of the Bangladesh National Museum, Bangabandhu Sheikh Mujib Medical University and Shahed Zia Park at Shahnagh, Bangla Motor, Karwan Bazar, Farmgate, Sangsad Bhaban, Agargaon, Shewrapara, Kazipara, section 1, 10, 13 and 14 of Mirpur, Kachukhet Bazar, Jatrabari crossing, Ittefaq crossing, Tikatuli Rajdhani Super Market, Motijheel Shapla Chattar, Dainik Bangla, Purana Paltan, Matsya Bahban, Kataban, Science Laboratory, Shangkar, Jigatola Gulistan, Bijoynagar, Kakrail, Moghbazar, Satrasta, Tibbat, Nabisco, Mohaklhali, Amtoli-Banani, Kakoli, Chairmanbari, Khilkhet, Uttara and Azampur.
   There are about 100 old passenger sheds at different points in the city while the corporation had demolished nearly 40 old sheds in 2005, corporation officials said.
   ‘If we can construct around 150 to 200 new passenger sheds, it will be enough to meet the demand in the city,’ one of the officials said.

An official of Grameen Phone was stabbed to death allegedly by a gang of muggers at Kalyanpur in the city early Friday.
   The muggers intercepted Belal Hossain, 27, a customer care service manager of the company’s Rajshahi office, when he was on way to his residence at Paikpara Government Colony at about 4:30am, the police said.
   The muggers stabbed Belal, who came to Dhaka form Rajshahi by bus and hired a rickshaw from Kalyanpur, indiscriminately as he tried to resist them, they said.
   The locals took him to the Orthopaedic Hospital where he died at about 6:30am.
   The attackers had managed to take away the mobile phone from him, the locals said.
   The body was handed over to his relatives after a post-mortem examination.
   His family members said Belal, son of a government official Ali Hossain, had joined the Grameen Phone in 2007, and had been posted at its Rajshahi office three months ago.
   A case was filed in this connection, but no one was arrested till evening.

Clinical waste management in Barisal is going on without proper management posing risks of environmental and health hazards.
   Waste of different hospitals, clinics and diagnostic centres are removed properly although an NGO, Prodipon, has been doing the works since 2000, Kaiser Ahmed, deputy director in-charge of the divisional office of the Directorate of Environment, said. ‘It will cause long-term health and environmental hazards.’
   The clinical wastes include used bandages, syringe and needles, amputated parts of human body, stool, urine, blood, cough, used saline, plastic and glass bottles of medicine and ingredients used for medical services and other disposable and non-disposable items.
   All of these contaminated items need to be destroyed by burning before dumping, Kaiser said, adding that those who are involved in the work must be trained by the concerned authorities.
   The clinical waste collec- tors should have proper training, dresses, transports, establishments and equipments for this kind of risky job, he added.
   ‘The system and equipments adopted by Prodipon for disinfection and burning are not adequate and a notice has been served in this connection to Prodipon,’ Kaiser said.
   Ranajit Dutta, president of Prodipon, however, expressed his ignorance about any notice from the environment directorate, and said they collect clinical wastes with the help of 40 organisations, which disinfect and burn the waste and then dump it at Natun Moylakhola of Kawnia area in the city.

A rickshaw puller was killed and two people were injured as a bus knocked down the rickshaw from behind near the Buriganga Bridge-2 in South Keraniganj on Friday.
   Witnesses said a Mawa-bound passenger bus from the Dhaka City had knocked down the rickshaw when Abul Kashem, 60, of Madaripur, was pulling his three-wheeler to cross the bridge in the afternoon. Kashem died on the spot. Two passengers travelling by his rickshaw were wounded.

The project to construct the city’s second sanitary landfill at Amin Bazar is waiting for approval of the Executive Committee of the National Economic Council.
   A meeting of the ECNEC project evaluation committee, which was held three months ago, sent back the project proposal to the Dhaka City Corporation, which initiated the process to construct the landfill, for modification, said an official of the corporation.
   ‘We have sent the revised project proposal with an estimated cost of Tk 68 crore to the Planning Commission through the LGRD and cooperatives ministry in the first week of January,’ he said adding that the project was waiting for the final approval of ECNEC.
   The project money will come from the Japan Debt Cancellation Fund and it has already allocated Tk 30 crore under the current fiscal, he said.
   The Amin Bazar landfill, as per the project, will cover waste management of five out zones out of 10 of the corporation, said Tariq Bin Yousuf, project director.
   The city’s first sanitary landfill at Matuail, which was inaugurated on October 3, 2007, covers five zones.
   According to the waste management master plan of DCC, 3,500 tonnes waste generate in the city every day of which 1,700 tonnes go to Matuail landfill and 1500 to 1600 tonnes go to Amin Bazar landfill.
   ‘Once the sanitary landfill at Amin Bazar is constructed, the entire city will come under the sanitary waste management system,’ said Tariq.
   The landfill will be constructed on 50 acres of land and it will take two years to complete the project since its beginning, he said.
   The Matuail Landfill was constructed at a cost of Tk 46.63 crore as per the master plan on solid waste management, formulated in 2005 with the technical assistance from the Japan International Cooperation Agency.
   The operation of the landfill site has been carried out in a systematic manner in which wastes are disposed of in layers, compacted and covered by a layer of matured wastes at the end of each day’s operation, Tariq said.
   Major sanitary landfill components introduced under the Matuail Landfill Project were leachate collection and vac venting system, surface drainage improvement, systematic operation of waste by daily coverage, slope reformation, working roads, weighbridge operation and vehicle washing facilities, he said.

The police arrested three young men at Pallabi in Mirpur of Dhaka and seized two firearms with nine bullets from an embroidery shop in the city.
   The arrested were identified as Rubel, a worker of the embroidery shop, and his accomplices Atiqur Rahman Babu and Mohammad Nayan.
   The police arrested the three while they were moving suspiciously in front of Anik Plaza at Pallabi, Section 11 at about 5:00am.
   Based on their statements, the police raided the embroidery shop, reportedly owned by Pappu and Bhola, at Pallabi, Section-12, Block-D, Avenue-2 at about 10:00am and seized one revolver, a one-shooter gun and nine bullets from the drawer of Rubel’s table.

Weather is likely to remain mainly dry with temporary partly cloudy sky elsewhere over the country during the 24-hour period till 6:00pm today.
   Mild cold wave is sweeping Rajshahi division and it may spread out over the regions of Jessore, Kushtia, Faridpur, Tangail and Mymensingh.
   Light to moderate fog may occur over the river basins of the country during early morning, it said. The night temperature may fall slightly over Rajshahi, Dhaka and Sylhet divisions and the regions of Jessore, Kushtia and Comilla and it may remain nearly unchanged elsewhere over the country, the Met Office predicted.
   The country’s highest temperature on Friday, 26.0 degrees Celsius, was recorded at Cox’s Bazar and the lowest, 8.2 degrees Celsius, at Rangpur and Dinajpur. The sun sets in the capital today at 5:45pm and rises tomorrow at 6:39am.

Growth is not directly linked to governance contrary to global lenders’ insistence, and the current economic sluggishness suggests that an economy that relies mostly on exotic reforms could grind to a halt at some point.
   An expatriate economist has come up with this conclusion while criticising international financial institutions for over-emphasising economic governance without considering equity of system or legitimacy of power structure and also ignoring home-grown ideas for development of poorer countries such as Bangladesh.
   ‘There is no relationship between growth and governance… [Rather] Data suggest an implicitly inverse relationship,’ MG Quibria, a teacher at Singapore Management University, noted in a presentation at the finance ministry in the past week.
   ‘Corruption surfaced in an atmosphere of lack of enforcement of laws, still giving dividends of impressive economic growth. Lender-driven reforms have failed to reform the system and the leakage of balloon through anti-corruption measures resulted in “grinding halt” to growth,’ an official made inference from the deliberations by the economist.
   After crackdown on corrupt suspects and massive demolition of informal business structures across the country, the growth in gross domestic product is feared to slow this fiscal, and all indicators of investments showed signs of declining.
   Exploring link between economic growth and governance performance in Asian developing economies, Quibria expressed his conviction that the countries that exhibit a deficit in governance tend to outperform — in terms of economic growth — those with a surplus — and by a large margin.
   Even examining the cases of the United States and Japan, the economist found ‘no tight link between rule of law and economic development’.
   Bangladesh, alongside China, Thailand, Vietnam and Cambodia, has been ranked in the category of below-average performance in Quibria’s research paper titled ‘Does Governance Matter? Yes, No or Maybe’.
   Citing examples of established democracies like India that suffered from various shortcomings, the research paper said it would take 300 years for India’s judicial system to dispose of the pending cases, even if no new cases were lodged. India is considered above-average performer.
   ‘The experiences of China and a number of other rapidly growing Asian countries are illustrative in this respect,’ the economist wrote, dwelling on Chinese reforms that were carried out in accordance with local demands.
   The miracle economies of East Asia at their earlier stage of transformation emphasised more on the economic dimensions of governance, relating to government effectiveness and regulatory quality, rather than those political dimensions relating to voice and accountability or control of corruption, noted Quibria, who had been in Dhaka as a project consultant.
   He, however, maintained that good governance in the form of rule of law is essential correlate of a successful democracy. Bangladesh achieved higher economic growth and attracted more investments during the years of democracy than did during the reign of autocratic rulers.
   The country pursued conventional anti-corruption policies, as prescribed by multilateral lending agencies, such as liberalisation, privatisation, rule of law reforms and greater transparency. But the country had consistently been ranked the most corruption one on earth for a number of years during democratic governance — a period when economists and various international actors termed Bangladesh a development puzzle for its performance in social sectors.
   The sectors and areas in which Bangladesh performed well and earned global reputation had nothing to do with the lenders’ prescriptions. Those positive indicators include tripling food production in three decades, massive remittance earning, growth of garment industry, resistance against natural calamities, expansion of micro-credit and success in school enrolment and immunisation programme.
   ‘It is not necessary to replicate the menu of best practice from western style governance from scratch to kick-start growth,’ the economist said terming it easy to prescribe the menu which are least helpful for recipient countries.
   He added that the lenders’ theory of best practice of governance might not lead to higher growth or welfare.
   Most of the lenders’ prescriptions came in ‘one size fits all’ manner.
   Quibria pointed out that the theories that were appropriate for low-income countries — such as Vietnam and Bangladesh — were not necessarily identical to those middle income countries — such as Eastern Europe and the Latin America.
   ‘Growth however does not depend on the availability of the best practice governance. Countries that deviated significantly from best practice governance institutions have done well,’ he observed.

A Workers Party faction on Friday expressed its dissatisfaction at the government’s decision of separating the Election Commission secretariat from the Prime Minister’s Office (now Chief Adviser’s Office) retaining the control over the appointment of commissioners.
   The council of advisers on Tuesday approved the Election Commission Secretariat Ordinance 2008 to separate the commission secretariat.
   The faction president, Khandaker Ali Abbas, and the general secretary, Saiful Huq, in a statement said the commission secretariat would not be independent fully as the control over the appointment of election commissioners still lies with the government.
   The separation must be in such a way that the commission has financial autonomy and the authority of appointment of the people at the secretariat and the commission.

A group of volunteer kidney donors has formed a humanitarian organisation ‘Organ Donors’ Club’ in Dhanmondi Residential Area in Dhaka.
   Kindey donors — Supreme Court lawyer KMS Hasan and Popy — have been made convener and member secretary of the club respectively at a meeting recently .
   KMS Hasan donated his kidney to his son while Popy donated her kidney to her brother.
   Interested persons who want to donate their vital organs including kidney are requested to become members of the organisation.
   The vision of the organisation is ‘let them live and live through others.’
   Hasan is the founding chairman of the Helal Memorial Foundation, a charitable organisation formed in memory of his kidney recipient son Helal. Helal died 12 years after kidney transplantation at Christian Medical College at Vellor of India.
   The meeting of the convening committee was sponsored by Lion Khandker Fazlul Huda, chief executive officer of Visa World Wide Admission.
   KMS Hasan urged the interim government to provide assistance to this organisation to help the people suffering from deadly diseases.

The Gana Forum general secretary, Saif Uddin Ahmed Manik, has been admitted to Comfort Hospital in Dhaka, said a release of the party on Friday. He has been suffering from cancer for long.
   He is now in the intensive care unit of the hospital under the treatment of physicians Mahmud Hasan and Omar Faroque Chowdhury.
   Special prayers were held for his early recovery in mosques, temples and pagodas on Friday, the release said.
   Awami League presidium member Matia Chowdhury, Bangladesher Samajtantrik Dal leader Khalequzzaman, Workers Party general secretary Bimal Biswas and others visited ailing Manik on Friday.
   AL presidium member Amir Hossain Amu, Workers Party president Rashed Khan Menon, Communist Party president Monzurul Ahsan Khan and Jatiya Samajtantrik Dal faction president Hasanul Haq Inu visited Manik in the hospital earlier.

The 23rd edition of the BBC Bangladesh Sanglap will take place at the Bangladesh-China Friendship Conference Centre in Dhaka today.
   A four-member panel comprising Awami League presidium member Suranjit Sengupta, Communist Party of Bangladesh president Manzurul Ahsan Khan, chairman of the Trustee Board of Transparency International Bangladesh Professor Muzaffar Ahmed and vice-president of Dhaka University Teachers’ Association Professor Tajmeri Islam will answer to questions and discuss the issues raised by the members of the audience.
   The programme to be presented and moderated by Kamal Ahmed of the BBC Bangla Service will start at 5:45pm, said a press release.
   The event will be aired on BBC Bangla service at 8:00pm on Sunday and on Channel-i at 8:00pm on Monday.
   The ongoing Bangladesh Sanglap series is produced by the BBC Bangla Service in conjunction with the BBC World Service Trust.

7 fake examinees held during IU admission tests
Seven fake examinees were held during the three days of admission tests of different units at Islamic University, Kushtia under 2007-08 academic session that ended on Thursday. Two of them were held on the last day of the tests on Thursday. They were Afsar Uddin of Tarabaria and Toufiq Rahman of Jalalpur in Pabna. On Tuesday, the authorities arrested three fake examinees — Jahangir Alam, Alamgir Hossain and Raju Ahamed. Two students were arrested on Wednesday. They were Shahidul Islam and Ruhul Amin. The university authorities handed over them to the IU police.

NSU photo show begins tomorrow
A five-day photography exhibition of the North South University Photography Club begins at the university at Banani in Dhaka tomorrow. The club organises the show with selected photographs snapped by 23 members of this club during the national photography fieldtrip 2007 that covered Khagrachari, Rangamati, Bandarban and Cox’s Bazar. The NSU vice-chancellor, Hafiz GA Siddique, will inaugurate the exhibition, which will remain open from 10:00am to 6:00pm till 6.00 in the evening every day, said a press release.
— New Age