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The implementation of at least 20 development projects, undertaken by the Chittagong City Corporation involving more than Tk 15 crore, came to a halt after the arrest of mayor ABM Mohiuddin Chowdhury on March 7, 2007.
   CCC sources said they had suspended the implementation of the projects apprehending delay in payment or non-payment as the mayor had awarded most of the contracts to his ‘chosen’ persons without floating any tender.
   The projects include development of Port Connecting Road, construction of Premier University building and market at Probartak intersection, construction of ward commissioner’s office at Dewanbazar, development of different institutions, including educational ones, and repairing roads and alleyways at different wards.
   The mayor in-charge of the city corporation, M Manjur Alam, admitted the facts, saying that a number of projects had been stalled after the arrest of mayor Mohiuddin. The contractors had suspended the construction work fearing uncertainty in payment, he added.
   ‘We have, however, managed to remove fears of the contractors by this time. Some contractors have already resumed the implementation of a number of projects that have been suspended by them after the arrest of the mayor.’
   Manjur also said they had scrapped and revised a few projects due to flouting of building construction rules and various irregularities such as use of substandard materials. But he didn’t point out any such project.
   The joint forces arrested mayor Mohiuddin at his Chashma Hill residence for his alleged involvement with different sorts of corruption. The Anti-Corruption Commission also filed several cases, accusing him of misappropriating the corporation funds, owning wealth beyond known sources of income and submitting false wealth statement.
   The divisional special judge’s court on Tuesday started recording the deposition of witnesses in one of the cases, filed in connection with misappropriation of the corporation funds by running a satellite channel, Bijoy TV, without any approval from the authorities concerned.

A mobile court of the Bangladesh Road Transport Authority on Tuesday jailed a driver for three months and seized three vehicles at Jatrabari in Dhaka.
   The court led by the BRTA executive magistrate (deputy secretary), Abdur Rashid, during a drive jailed the driver of a human hauler for running his vehicle without driving licence.
   Three vehicles — a minibus, a CNG-run auto-rickshaw and a human hauler — were seized for not having necessary documents.
   During the drive, the court also realised Tk 33,300 in fines for violating traffic rules and filed 19 cases against CNG-run auto-rickshaws, taxicabs, human haulers, buses and other vehicles.
   The cases were filed under the Motor Vehicle Ordinance 1983 for not having valid papers like driving licences, updated route permits, registration, fitness certificates and tax tokens, the magistrate said.
   Normally the BRTA runs its mobile court on the Manik Miah Avenue, Dar-us-Salam Road of Mirpur, Rampura, Khilgaon and other busy areas in the capital.
   The BRTA launched its mobile court drive in April 2007 in the wake of widespread allegations of harassment to passengers by the CNG auto-rickshaw and taxicab drivers.
   The past BNP-led alliance government in 2002 introduced meter fare for four-stroke CNG auto-rickshaws and taxicabs in the city after phasing out the two-stroke auto-rickshaws.

A female student of Dhaka University was found dead in her residence at Senpara in the city’s Mirpur area Monday night.
   The deceased was Mahbuba Farhana Eti, 25, a master’s degree student of Bangla department of the university and wife of Atiqur Rahman Pial.
   Being informed by her husband, the police went to the residence at about 8:00pm and found her body hanging from the ceiling fan in her room.
   The police recovered the body and sent it to Dhaka Medical College Hospital Morgue for autopsy.
   Eti’s husband claimed she committed suicide when he was away of the house following a conjugal bickering.
   But her father Afab Ali alleged that Pial strangled her.
   A UD case was filed with the local police station.

Mass awareness, preventive measures, necessary drugs, development of hygienic environment and mosquito elimination can help cut the harmful filarial disease.
   This was revealed at a discussion organised at the training room of Urban Primary Healthcare Project of Rajshahi City Corporation on Tuesday in observance of National Filariasis Day.
   Rajshahi Niskrity, a primary healthcare organisation, in collaboration with LEPRA Bangladesh arranged the discussion.
   Chaired by chief health officer Dr Rizvi Sultan, the meeting was addressed, among others, by mayor in-charge of the RCC Rezaunnabi Dudu, executive director of Rajshahi Niskrity SKL Muhammad Lalon, senior health education officer Nazrul Islam and Dr Anzuman Ara.
   Speakers said filaria or elephantiasis is not only the public nuisance in the country but also a social and economical burden. The disease is not curse or heritable rather only the mosquito biting is its cause. Four female species of mosquitoes — anopheles, culex, aedes and manosonia — act as vector of the disease.
   They noted that the habitats and breeding places of the mosquitoes must be destroyed. The disease has so far spread in 32 districts but seven of them — Rajshahi, Chapainawabganj, Panchagarh, Thakurgaon, Dinajpur, Rangpur and Lalmonirhat — have been identified as the worst affected.
   Some 474 patients suffering from filaria have so far been detected in Rajshahi. Mass drug administration activities have been started in the district including the metropolis aimed at making it free from the infection of filaria.
   The speakers said the government has formulated a national plan styled ‘filaria elimination programme’ and has been working to make the country free from it by 2015 according to the guideline of World Health Organisation.

The country can earn a huge amount of foreign currencies by exporting its traditional pottery goods if the government comes forward to patronise this ailing but potential sector.
   A good many countries have already taken a fancy of the country’s earthen items for their aesthetic beauty, said sources in the Bangladesh Small and Cottage Industries Corporation.
   Clay fancy items like dolls, toys, showpieces, savings bank, flower vase, knick-knack, wall painting, wall mat and sculpture have a good demand in different countries, they added.
   Over 5,000 pottery artefacts are exported every year to more than 15 countries including the US, the UK, France, Japan, Germany and Australia, according to pottery traders.
   Some private organisations, including Karika, Kordi Jute Works, Arong, Head Works and Dhaka Crafts are engaged in clay artefacts business.
   Around Tk 36 crore was earned in July-March period of 2006-07 from handicrafts and a significant amount of the money came from the pottery sector, according to Export Promotion Bureau statistics.
   Besides, household utensils like water vessel, glass, jug, pot covers, tea set, plates, jar, cooking pot, sweet pot, candle stick, coil box, lamp, ornament box and other house fittings have a good demand at home and abroad.
   Clay household utensils are made in different sizes and shapes, and some of which are decorated with different colours and designs of leaves, flowers, birds and lines.
   Earthen fancy toys and
   fruits like palm, banana, jackfruit and mango draw huge attraction in traditional fairs and festivals in the country.
   Some earthen items are also used during rituals of different religions like Hindu and Buddhist.
   The rural poor use rudimentary and cheap earthen goods while people belonging to opulent section in urban areas use fancy pottery goods as showpieces in drawing rooms or as items of interior decoration.
   Jenia Mossarraf, a housewife of in the city’s Azimpur area, who was buying a flower vessel from a pottery shop near Curzon Hall said, ‘I have much fascination to indigenous materials especially pottery items and collect them for house decoration’.
   Girish, an old potter at Rayer Bazar in the capital, said pottery goods are getting elusive day by day as potters are leaving their traditional profession due to financial crisis and lack of necessary tools like potter’s wheel and modern baking place.
   He said, ‘Once there were at least 250 to 300 potter (Kumar) families in our locality, but now the number has come down to only 10-12 families.
   When contacted, Swapan Kumar Sikder, a teacher of ceramic department of Institute of Fine Art at Dhaka University said, ‘We all should use pottery goods as our household utensils to save the country’s age-old pottery sector.
   ‘Use of pottery goods as utensils has no side effects. More importantly, we should use pottery items to protect as well as to respect our valuable cultural tradition.’
   He said potters should be given proper training so that they can produce quality products to face the global stiff competition.
   Swapan also urged the Bangladesh Small and Cottage Industries Corporation to provide necessary support to the potters to save this sector.

A schoolgirl was killed by unidentified miscreants at Sonaikandi village under Paba upazila of the district Monday night.
   The police said Aruna, 8, daughter of Badesh Ali and student of Class II of Sonaikandi Government Primary School, might have been kidnapped while she was returning to their house from the school in the afternoon. Since then she was missing.
   Relatives and neighbours found her body on a nearby sugarcane field on Tuesday morning. The police recovered the body and sent it to hospital morgue for post mortem.
   A murder case was recorded with the Paba police station. The police neither unearthed any clue behind the murder nor arrested anyone.

The Rapid Action Battalion on Tuesday arrested three suspected members of notorious Shahadat gang from the city’s Pallabi area and seized a shotgun, two revolvers and eight rounds of bullet from their possession.
   A RAB-4 team raided Eastern Housing at Pallabi and arrested the three — Imran, Mamun and Momin — from there at around noon. The three reportedly admitted their involvement in the killing of a trader Barek in Mirpur last year.

The Rapid Action Battalion arrested two youths along with a firearm in the Sylhet city Monday night. Battalion sources said a RAB team raided on the city’s Hadarpara area and picked up the two — Rumin Ahmed, 23, and Hasan Ahmed Hasu, 24 — in possession of a pipe gun.

Journalists’ community, family members and different political and cultural organisations in Khulna observed the fourth death anniversary of the journalist Manik Chandra Saha on Tuesday. He was a Khulna based senior staff correspondent of New Age.
   A former reporter of BBC Bangla service and also the former president of Khulna Press Club, Manik was killed in a bomb attack at Khulna Sadar upazila in Khulna city, on January 15, 2004, when he was on his way to his residence. His family members, Manik Saha Smriti Parishad, Khulna Press Club, Khulna Union of Journalists, Khulna city and district units of Communist Party of Bangladesh, Bangladesh Students’ Union, Bangladesh Juba Union, and Awami League paid floral tributes to him, placing flowers on the journalist’s monument on KPC premises.
   Khulna unit of Udichi, Ratan Sen Public Library, Shaheed Altaf Mahamud Sangeet Bhaban, Teerthalok Sangha and Arja Dharmasabha Mondir Committee also offered flowers to the monument in the morning.
   KPC and KUJ held separate rallies at 10:30am and 11:30am respectively at the club auditorium. The rally, organized by KPC and chaired by the club president Wadudur Rahman Panna, was addressed by the journalist leaders and leaders of different political parties and socio-cultural organizations.
   The speakers at the rally demanded punishment of the killers of Manik, and those behind his killing. They were committed to stand by the truth and keep writing fearlessly, said the journalists’ community at the rally, adding they are not intimidated by the killings of journalists.
   They thanked the present Khulna City Corporation Mayor in-charge for rebuilding the plaque of the Journalist Manik Saha Road. Manik Saha Smriti Parishad organised a discussion meeting in Khulna Press Club auditorium at 4:30pm.

Weather will remain dry over the country during the 24-hour period till 6:00pm today, the Met Office said.
   Light to moderate fog may occur over the river basins of the country during early morning. Night temperature may remain nearly unchanged over the country.
   The country’s highest temperature of 27.3 degrees Celsius was recorded at Cox’s Bazar on Tuesday and the lowest, 8.2 degrees Celsius, at Jessore.
   The sun sets in the capital today at 5:33pm and rises tomorrow at 6:43am.

The government is unlikely to hold any consultation meeting outside Dhaka to involve
   grass-roots people in the process of formulating the second version of the lender-driven poverty reduction strategy paper, expected to be finalised in July.
   A high official of the General Economics Division of the Planning Commission disclosed this at a seminar on ‘Making Poverty the Story: Time to involve media in poverty reduction’ in Dhaka on Tuesday.
   The government has recently initiated the process of the second PRSP as the first version of the government’s development handbook — ‘Unlocking the Potentials: the National Strategy for Accelerated Poverty Reduction’ — is scheduled to expire on June 20, 2008. The first PRSP was planned for two years and was later extended for a year.
    ‘It will be impossible for the caretaker government to hold consultations outside Dhaka under the current circumstances, due specially to time constraint,’ Moahammad Golam Sarwar, joint chief of the division, told the seminar organised by Panos Institute Bangladesh at the BRAC-Inn Centre.
   Formulation of the first PRSP in 2005 followed a series of nominal consultations at the divisional headquarters, although such meetings were hardly effective in terms of accommodating development needs of the grass-roots people.
   The official explained that the government had no lack of willingness to disseminate information to the media, but there was a common lack of efficiency in the government machinery, like that in other organisations, in focussing on issues properly.
   ‘In developing society, no organ of the state is functioning efficiently as the media, too, is lagging in making adequate investigative reports,’ the official said.
   John Barnes, head of globalisation programme of Panos London, underlined the need for linking poverty reduction issues with governance and rights to make interesting stories on poverty to stimulate debates on how to help the country come out of poverty trap.
   He recommended that the government should come up with supportive media legislation and independent regulatory bodies to help the media flourish and contribute to the poverty reduction and overall economic development.
   Journalist Mostafa Kamal Majumdar suggested creation of an endowment fund for helping the media to focus on issues of public interests.
   Journalist Hasan Shahriar said to avoid controversies and compromises with ethics,
   the media should avoid ‘hobnobbing’ with the business houses.
   Shahidul Islam, a development activist, alleged that the voices of the development organisations and recipients of micro-credit in southern
   part of the country had been missing in the media. ‘Mohajans [those who lend money at high interest rates] started business taking advantage of moratorium given on micro-finance organisations after the Sidr,’ he pointed out.

Graduate students continued their protests in Dhaka against the leakage of English question paper of bachelor’s degree examinations under the National University and demanded punishment to those involved in the scam.
   Several hundred students of Dhaka College on Tuesday took to the street in front of their college at about 11:00 am and blocked traffic for about an hour on the Mirpur Road between Nilkhet and Science Laboratory.
   The agitating students placed a three-point charter of demands, which include withdrawal of the cancellation of the November 11 English (compulsory) examination and ‘auto promotion’ giving all the students 45 per cent marks.
   The students must not pay for the question paper leakage, which was a fault of the National University, they argued, demanding punitive actions against the people responsible for the scam.
   The blockade was withdrawn at about 12:15 pm after some teachers intervened.
   A group of students of Government Titumir College also demonstrated against the question paper leakage, blocking Mohakhali-Gulshan-1 road for about half an hour from 12:30 pm.
   There was no unpleasant incident reported during the demonstrations.
   National University authorities earlier postponed the examinations, scheduled for January 12 and 13, amid allegations of question paper leakage. The examinations will no be held on January 29 and 30.
   A three-member committee is probing the scam.

The chief justice, Mohammad Ruhul Amin, has asked the government to ensure security of all the judges.
   He was speaking at a function commemorating the death of two senior assistant judges of Jhalakati on Dhaka district judge’s court compound on Tuesday.
   Later, he unveiled the plaque of Jagannath-Sohel Memorial auditorium.
   Mohammad Sohel Ahmed and Jagannath Pandey, assistant judges, were killed in JMB bomb attack at Jhalakati on November 14, 2005.
   Recalling the killing Justice Amin said Islam was the religion of peace. The Qur’an prescribes severe punishment for the troublemakers. ‘Those indulge in terrorism in the name of religion are enemy of the humanity,’ he said.
   The law adviser, AF Hassan Ariff, present at the function said the responsibility of the judges was to protect the rights of the people. Expectation of the people is now high in view of separation of the judiciary.
   Organised by the Bangladesh Judicial Service Association the function was addressed among others by the president of Dhaka District Bar Association, Fakir Delwar Hossain, and the registrar of the Supreme Court, Iftekhar Ahmed. District Judge AKM Ishtiaque Hussain presided.

Time for sales of IER admission forms extended
The Dhaka University authorities have extended time for distribution of admission forms for the first year honours courses of the Institute of Education and Research for 2007-08. Admission forms will be available at the Janata Bank’s branch at the Teachers-Students Centre till January 24 instead of January 17 and the students will have to submit forms within January 26. The admission test will be held at 3:00pm instead of 10:00am on February 1. Other necessary information regarding to the admission test will be available on the notice board of the institute.
— New Age

MIST launches MBA programme
The Military Institute of Science and Technology has launched the evening Executive Master of Business Administration programme under its management studies department. Commandant of the MIST Maj Gen Abdul Wadud inaugurated the course as the chief guest on the MIST campus at Mirpur in the city recently, said an ISPR press release on Tuesday. A total of 50 students got admitted to the course of the Executive MBA that was open for both defence and civil students. The course consists five semesters and will be completed by 20 months, the release added. Heads of all departments and branches of the MIST, defence and civil teachers and staff officers attended the inauguration function.
— BSS