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Sweepers and drivers of Dhaka City Corporation working under muster roll staged a sit-in demonstration on Monday to press home their demand for cancelling the decision to hand over a corporation zone to private sector.
   About 1,000 muster roll sweepers and drivers of the corporation, who had blocked the main entrance of the Nagar Bhaban, withdrew their blockade after about two hours following assurance by the high officials of cancelling the decision.
   The demonstrators, however, gave the authorities a 2-day ultimatum to cancel the decision to hand over waste management activities of zone-5 to private sector, and threatened with tougher programmes, otherwise, said Abdul Khaleq Talukder, member secretary of the DCC Employees’ Coordination Committee.
   The sweepers and drivers would announce fresh programmes on Thursday if the authorities failed to meet their demand by the deadline, he said, adding that the corporation was processing the formalities to hand over zone-5 to the private sector.
   The agitators also demanded that the corporation authorities brought back the waste management activities of zone-9 and zone-10 under the corporation’s jurisdiction.
   The corporation had earlier given zone-9 and zone-10 to private sector to reduce the expenditure and improve the quality of service of the corporation, but it did not work, they claimed.
   ‘We issued letters to the Dhaka mayor and other senior officials of the corporation and the LGRD and cooperatives ministry last week, asking them to withdraw the decision. But we have not yet received any positive response,’ said Baijul, another leader of the committee.
   About 1,400 muster roll employees of the zone will lose their jobs if the corporation implements the decision, he said.
   The government took the decision to give the zone to private sector about six months back and the corporation is just implementing the decision, said an official of the corporation.
   ‘A meeting will be held with the officials of the LGRD and cooperatives ministry on Tuesday to solve the problem,’ he said.
   Monowara Begum, a sweeper of zone-5 who is also the only earning member of her family, said she had been doing her job for the last 10 years and her family would be in financial crisis if she lost her job.
   ‘My father was seriously injured 10 years ago while cleaning a road. He is still unable to work and I inherited my father’s job,’ she said.
   Rasheda, another sweeper, said she had been working for the last 12 years and as a muster roll employee she was getting Tk 3,000 a month.
   ‘It is difficult to run our family with this money. But if I lose my job we have to live without food,’ she said.
   There are 12,212 officials and employees working in the corporation. Of them 345 are Class I officials, 183 Class II officials, 2,324 Class III employees, 2,088 Class IV employees and 7,272 are employees under muster roll.

About half of the beds at Shaheed Suhrawardy Hospital at Sher-e-Bangla Nagar in Dhaka usually remain vacant as many people are still confused over its activities.
   Many people in Dhaka and other parts of the country do not know that it is a general hospital, and they still consider it either a cardiac or ophthalmologic hospital, hospital sources said.
   ‘At least 50 patients come to the hospital with visiting cards of the doctors of National Institute of Cardiovascular Diseases each day, seeking treatment for cardiovascular problems,’ the Suhrawardy Hospital director, Dr Khadiza Begum, said.
   In fact, there is no initiative from the government to inform people of the treatment facilities in the 375-bed Suhrawardy Hospital, she said.
   According to a professor of the hospital, on average, 50 per cent beds remain vacant in the hospital while two to three patients are always queuing up for a bed in other government hospitals in Dhaka.
   Shaheed Suhrawardy Hospital complex had been accommodating the National Institute for Cardiovascular Diseases and National Institute for Ophthalmology since 1980. The NICVD started shifting to its own building at Sher-e-Bangla Nagar in 1993 and it was completed in 1999.
   But still unaware of it, people frequently visit the Suhrawardy Hospital for cardiovascular treatment, said the director of the hospital.
   ‘As they still know that the National Institute for Ophthalmology is housed in the Suhrawadry Hospital, some patients keep coming to the hospital with eye diseases, whereas the institute, especially known as eye hospital, was shifted to its own building at Agargaon in the last month,’ Khadiza said.
   There are some other problems keeping the Suhrawardy Hospital with few patients, said a physician working in Dhaka Medical College Hospital, who had earlier worked in Suhrawardy Hospital.
   ‘Patients and their attendants sometimes need half an hour to find a department in the Suhrawardy Hospital as there is no indicator or arrow mark to point to the departments,’ he said.
   As the emergency department is located at the back side of the hospital, patients often face difficulties to avail emergency services, said sources in the hospital.
   A physician at the hospital said some brokers were tarnishing the reputation of the leading public hospitals with their false promises of providing the patients with better services at some private clinics. ‘Now the hospital is losing patients at an alarming rate,’ he said.
   There are departments like medicine, ophthalmology, surgery, ENT, child diseases, dermatology, gynaecology, physiotherapy and dentistry in the hospital, physicians said.

Acute shortage of manpower has been prevailing at the Barisal City Corporation seriously hampering delivery of services to the city residents by the corporation.
   The corporation is now running with 278 employees, 238 permanent and 40 muster roll, which is less than one-fourth of the required total, sources in the corporation said.
   Staff shortage has turned so acute that the corporation cannot properly render its services including water supply, health care and sanitation facilities as well as issuance of citizenship and birth certificates, the sources added.
   Besides, the sources said, the corporation faces difficulties in carrying out vaccination under of immunisation programme.
   The then Barisal municipality with three lakh population in 25 square kilometre area was upgraded to the city corporation on July 25, 2002.
   A total of 238 municipality staff was absorbed to the newly upgraded city corporation with extension of its area to 45 square kilometre having around 5 lakh people, said Awlad Hossain Dilu, word commissioner and mayor in charge. Ahsan Habib Kamal, the then municipal chairman, became the first mayor in charge of the city corporation.
   The first election to the city corporation was held on March 20, 2003 and Advocate Majibor Rahman Sarwar became the first elected mayor of the corporation.
   The new mayor temporarily appointed 140 staff in the corporation in between August 2003 to December 27, 2006 without following any necessary rules.
   The appointments were made without any organogram of workforce and even without any advertisement or holding any interviews.
   The corporation, amid protests at these appointments, sent a proposal for organogram of 1,800 staff to the local government ministry on July 19, 2003.
   But the ministry sent back the proposal to the corporation asking for revising down the proposed volume of the work force.
   The corporation later sent a revised proposal for 1,629 staff to the ministry on December 5, 2004.
   But the local government ministry gave the approval slashing the number to 1,276 staff and sent the organogram to the finance ministry through the establishment ministry on December 2, 2005.
   Later, a three-member review committee formed by the finance ministry approved only the appointment of only 828 staff and sent it to the observation committee.
   But the observation committee is yet to take any decision in this regard, corporation sources said.
   A corporation meeting, chaired by mayor Sarwar and attended by 30 out of 40 ward commissioners mostly loyal to the BNP, decided to appoint 140 temporary staff on March 11, 2007.
   The meeting made the jobs of 123 out permanent and while the remaining 17 as master roll employees.
   However, questions of nepotism and biasness were raised inover these appointments following the declaration of emergency, sources said. The local government ministry formed a one-member team on June 2007 at the directive of additional divisional commissioner of Barisal, ABM Omar Faruk Chowdhury, to investigate the allegations.
   The probe report was submitted to the ministry at the end of July and the ministry after reviewing the report decided to cancel the appointments of 121 out of 124.
   In this regard, an order signed by the senior assistant secretary of the ministry, Delwar Hussein, reached the corporation on October 17, 2007.

Congested and rickety dwellings and a little or no access to sanitation and safe drinking water leave about three lakh slum dwellers in the Khulna city at the risk of serious health hazards.
   The slum dwellers from different city corners alleged they did not have easy access to safe drinking water as the deep tube wells provided by the corporation were either occupied by private establishments or local people who had their own houses.
   Most slums do not have a proper sewage system, they said, adding that there are some drains by the sides of some of the slums, but they are made in an unplanned way. Dwellers from different slums at char areas, Labanchara, C& B colony, 4, 5 and 7 no jetty area, Sabujbag, Nabapalli, Boyra, Rayermahal, Gallamari and Daulatpur in the city said they were using unsafe open latrines and had to endure bad stench.
   KCC sources said three NGOs – World Vision, Nabalok and Dustha Sastha Kendra– had been working to solve the sanitation problem. The NGOs have been constructing sanitary latrines at a few slums but the slum dwellers are lacking safe drinking water and drainage system, they said.
   According to a KCC study, the KCC houses 651 small and big slums with about three lakh people. The study says, of the 5,500 latrines used by the slum dwellers, 855 are mud-made latrines and 450 are hung latrines. Both the mud-made and hung latrines are hazardous to health.
   The slum dwellers generally suffer from different water-borne diseases and stomach upset mainly due to unhygienic environment and lack of safe drinking water and a proper drainage system, KCC health officer Md Abdullah said.

A housewife, who was tortured allegedly by her husband for dowry at Shankar on Saturday, died at the Dhaka Medical College Hospital on Monday.
   According to the family members, Mohammad Milton of 239/A, Shankar in Dhanmondi police area and second husband of Asma Begum, 30, kicked her in the abdomen as she had denied to bring money from her father Saturday night.
   Hearing her scream, neighbours took her to Dhaka Medical College Hospital where she died at around 7:15am on Monday.
   Asma had got married with Milton three and a half years ago leaving her first husband Abul Hossain, the family members said, adding Milton would often torture her for dowry.

Distribution of national identity cards with photos of the 177,819 voters of Barisal City Corporation began on Monday.
   The deputy commissioner, Manjur-e-Ilahi, inaugurated distribution of the cards at a function organised to hand over cards among 150 members of manta tribe at Rasulpur slum on the bank of the River Kirtankhola.
   Distribution of the cards will be completed by January 31, sources at the Election Commission, Barisal said. Manirul Islam, deputy election commissioner, Moniruzzaman, election officer of Barisal Sadar upazila, Lieutenant Colonel Abu Sayeed Muhammad Ali, commander of the army-led joint forces in Barisal, were also present.

A video compact disc of the Spartacus 71, video-film directed by Mostofa Sarwar Farooki, was released in the Star Cineplex of Basundhara City Shopping Complex in Dhaka on Monday.
   Members of the Dhaka guerrilla group ‘crack platoon’ in 1971, Nasir Uddin Yousuff and Habibul Alam (Bir Pratik) unveiled the cover of the VCD, produced by the Impress Telefilm Limited and released by the Laser Vision.
   Poet Nirmalendu Goon, filmmaker Tareque Masud and novelist Anisul Hoque were present as special guests at the function.
   The managing director of Impress Telefilm, Faridur Reza Sagar, and chairman of Laser Vision, AKM Arifur Rahman, also spoke on the function.
   The speakers said the movie would be considered as one of the best films on the country’s war of independence.
   They also hoped that the film would encourage the filmmakers of this generation to come forward to make films on war and the video production houses would release more films of the war.
   The launching ceremony was followed by the screening of the 61-minute film, which will be available at the video shops across the country.

Weather may remain mainly dry with partly cloudy sky over the country during the 24-hour period till 6:00pm today.
   The Met Office predicted chances of light rain or drizzle at one or two places over Sylhet division and the regions of Mymensingh and Comilla during the period. Light to moderate fog may occur over the river basins of the country during late night to morning, it said.
   The night temperature may fall by 1-2 degrees Celsius over Rajshahi, Khulna, Barisal and Dhaka divisions and may remain nearly unchanged over Chittagong and Sylhet divisions, the Met office predicted.
   The country’s highest temperature on Monday, 28.1 degrees Celsius, was recorded at Khepupara and the lowest, 13.5 degrees Celsius, at Rangamati.
   The sun sets in the capital today at 5:37pm and rises tomorrow at 6:43am.
   The Met Office predicted further fall in the night temperature in the outlook for subsequent two days and a little change in the extended outlook for another five days.

Reunion of DU political science 1976-77 batch
on Feb 8
The reunion of the students of 1976-76 batch (Masters’ exam held in 1980) of political science department of Dhaka University will be held on February 8. All students of the batch have been requested to contact to the persons on following telephone numbers by January 31 — Aziz 01713016417, 8650061 (office), Mahmud 017120912892, 8151102 (home), Abul Hossain 01713020210, 9342725 (office) and Khaleda 01911668412, 9886250 (home), a press release said.
— BSS