Editorial
It’s time Khaleda, Hasina developed
a working relationship
Reports in the national media on Thursday that Khaleda Zia and Sheikh Hasina have agreed to sit across the table for talks have generated anticipation and expectation in a large section of society, which, given the fact that, except for exchanging cursory greetings on a few occasions, the two top leaders of the country have not talked to each other for so many years now, is understandable. Equally understandable is the mistrust the two leaders and their respective parties nurture about each other; after all, the two camps are poles apart in many areas such as their history and their tactics to achieve political objective. They have also had bitter experiences in the past, for which they blame—perhaps not entirely unjustifiably—each other. Amid such mutual mistrust and recrimination, it is almost impossible for the two leaders and their parties to work closely.
However, what Khaleda and Hasina need to realise is that, while the people are aware of the differences and the crude power struggle between them, they nonetheless expect the two political camps, especially the two leaders, to forge a consensus on certain crucial issues of national interest, e.g. building political institutions, developing a culture of accommodation of, and tolerance to, contrary views, ensuring economic progress, establishing democratic accountability to their own supporters and to the people, making the national parliament functional, etc. They need to realise that the people view such animosity as a major impediment to their well-being; they know any of these two leaders can bring them both boon and bane.
There are certain obvious reasons behind the popular anticipation and expectation over a possible Khaleda-Hasina dialogue this time around. In the past two years or so, an apolitical, unelected and illegal regime has literally pushed the people against the wall; not only has the scope for the exercise of their fundamental rights remained suspended, their economic conditions have gone from bad to worse. They now seem to believe that, if the two leaders do not set their parochial partisan, and maybe personal, differences aside, and agree to work towards a peaceful transition to governance by elected representatives, there would be a prolongation of the prevailing apolitical rule. They are also apprehensive that, if one of the two major political parties were to strike an underhand deal with the incumbents for a guaranteed passage to state power, not only would it decimate the possibility of a peaceful restoration of the political process but it may also result in a sustained period of social and political instability. At this point in time, the people can afford neither.
We believe the two leaders and their respective parties can and should work out decent working relations despite their differences. The expectation and the well-being of the people are at stake here – the wellbeing that both parties claim are committed to. They can surely put aside their differences for the time being, put the apprehension of the people to rest, and realise the widespread expectation for a return to governance by elected representatives by way of a peaceful and transparent transition to the political process. This is good both for the people and the political parties in question. There is hardly any reason why they should not consider such a proposition.
Manmohan’s assurance must
translate into action
THE Indian prime minister has assured the chief adviser to the military-controlled interim government that New Delhi would take measures to reduce the large trade gap between the neighbouring countries by importing from Bangladesh, so reported New Age on Thursday. The sentiment is commendable and we thank Manmohan for his assurance. However, we would like to point out that it is not the first time that New Delhi has made such assurances. In the past, such a policy statement has hardly flowed down in similar spirit to the implementing agencies of the Indian government. Given that Bangladesh imports over $2 billion worth of goods and services from India, and that is only through official channels, which is about ten times the value of its exports to the largest neighbour, there needs to be active and sincere initiatives to strike a better balance in trade between the two countries.
It should be noted that in Bangladesh, investments, goods and services of Indian origin enjoy virtually unrestricted access. Ranging from glamorous cine magazines and cosmetics to computer training institutes and hospitals, Indian investments and commodities enjoy wide access to the Bangladeshi market. In fact, this access is to such an extent that for some establishments, their commercially viability depends substantially on their volume of business in Bangladesh.
Bangladeshi products, on the other hand, hardly enjoy such latitude. Be it publications, be it Bangladeshi investment, entry into the Indian market is high restricted and this prevents Bangladeshi producers and investors from expanding into India’s vast and thriving market. In this regard, the Bangladeshi government, together with the business quarters, has as much to do as do the relevant Indian authorities.
It has also been the case, especially during the past few years, that lowering of trade distorting measures on India’s part—its bevy of non-tariff and para-tariff barriers—that would presumably lead to increased exports from Bangladesh has been tagged with the provision of transit through Bangladesh. The Indian establishment has severally impressed upon the Bangladesh government that it must provide transit facilities to the seven sisters in the north-east of India if Bangladesh wants more trade and better market access.
We point out that the two issues are different. Trade distorting tariff, non-tariff or para-tariff barriers have to do with economic interest of both the countries but transit has to do more with geopolitical interests and must be deliberated upon accordingly, with due consideration. We stress that Manmohan Singh’s assurance and the spirit of his statement is not reflected by the actions of the relevant offices and departments of his administration that often appear to be burdening Bangladeshi producers and aspiring exporters with far more conditions and regulations than seem justified. Such an attitude would only perpetuate the apparent mistrust between the countries their peoples which cannot be beneficial for either.
Sidr, one year on
Could an elected government of the Awami League or the Bangladesh Nationalist Party – as venal as their power politics may be – have ignored the millions of voters of the constituencies along the coast, allowing the opposition to ratchet up discontent, being routinely embarrassed by the media, to leave their Sidr rehabilitation promises unfulfilled a year after the disaster? Perhaps, but they would be punished for it at the ballots, writes Mahtab Haider
THIS Sunday, it will be one year since cyclone Sidr. On the night of November 15 last year a 12-feet high tidal wave and winds of up to 240km/hour had ripped through the coast of Bangladesh killing more than 3,000 people and leaving millions homeless. One year on, the plight of many of those who survived is as heartrending as the images from the early days of that disaster, when millions were living in temporary shelters, with nothing to eat, and no savings or belongings left to start building their lives again.
According to the UK-based aid agency Oxfam, more than a million survivors who lost their homes and family members to Sidr still remain homeless a year on, their desperate plight an indictment of the often hollow pledges made by the government and the aid agencies. Although a flurry of foreign governments and aid agencies had pledged funds to rebuild homes for the Sidr survivors in the wake of the disaster, only about a quarter of the 78,000 homes that were pledged have been rebuilt to be more resilient for future cyclones.
According to Oxfam, ‘Another 276,000 families have received no reconstruction help and are living in unsafe shelters, built from polythene sheets and salvaged materials. Additionally, landless families living on government-owned land, or Khas areas, are excluded from receiving any government shelter support because they have no official land titles.’ In a documentary on the desperate plight of the Sidr survivors that the aid agency released on Thursday, Mussamat Halima from Barguna describes the plight she shares with many others now living in temporary shelters: ‘People who have land deeds were given houses and those who don’t were not. They had to make do with plastic sheeting they received after the disaster. The sheets are now torn; people are living with ripped pieces of sheeting and broken tin.’
They have braved the monsoon over the past months, but the prospect of a winter without enough warm clothes or a roofed house could be more than many infants and children will be able to survive. The millions of families on the coast make their living from homestead farming and as agriculture workers for other landowners. While the former typically meets food needs, families rely on the money that their men earn in the planting and harvest season by working on larger farms for other basic goods. Sidr’s widespread agricultural damage has made it hard to find work locally, and insecure houses make adults reluctant to seek work far away, lest their children be harmed or their land illegally occupied.
Six months ago, when I reported out of the Sidr-affected area, the situation had been much the same, with local bureaucrats saying that ‘quite enough’ aid had been given to the survivors and they were now milking their misfortune for more money from the aid agencies – a view that is not uncommon among the ruling elite in Bangladesh. Within the first six months, the local administrations and the military-controlled interim government in Dhaka were yet to complete the official formalities for massive amounts of aid pledged by the Indian government as well as the $130 million pledged by an anonymous donor for the Sidr rehabilitation and recovery. Another six months on, the story remains the same.
While it is often true of aid agencies that they will flock into disaster zones along with the international TV networks and in many cases trickle out as the disaster loses its potency to shock the world, rarely do governments neglect a disaster of this scale if only because of the price they pay for such neglect at the next ballots. A great deal has been written in the past on how democracy plays an indispensable role in not only acting as an early warning system against humanitarian disasters, but also how opposition groups and media become the eyes and ears that can take governments to task for failing or faltering in disaster response.
In fact, some of the clearest and most potent examples of how the lack of democracy can make communities more vulnerable to natural disasters are the Bhola cyclone of erstwhile East Pakistan in 1970, and cyclone Nargis – which caused widespread death and devastation in Myanmar earlier this year. In both cases, the military junta ruling the country, military strongman Yahya Khan in Pakistan’s case in 1970 and General Than Shwe and his cabal in Myanmar, first neglected to inform or evacuate communities in the path of a powerful cyclone, and afterwards – whether driven by the characteristic bravado and machismo of military governments across the world – or because of a simple lack of accountability, failed to launch an aid effort commensurate with the disaster at hand.
It was on November 12, 1970 that the Bhola cyclone made landfall in the erstwhile East Pakistan, killing an estimated half a million people, making it the most deadly tropical cyclone in recorded history. In the thana Tazmuddin alone, over 45 per cent of an estimated 350,000 people were killed. A report published on December 1, 1970, in the New York Times reveals that millions of people in the Bangladeshi coast had been completely unaware of the cyclone, even as it had developed for four days in the Bay of Bengal, gradually heading north, with the government mysteriously failing to use its early warning system to predict the storm or to issue public warnings.
In the wake of the Bhola cyclone, General Yahya Khan, the president and chief martial law administrator of Pakistan at the time, ordered a period of national mourning. But that was the bulk of what he and his cabinet did for the survivors. For the first ten days from November 12 only one military aircraft and three crop-dusting aircrafts were assigned to handle relief operations along the devastated coast of Bangladesh. New York Times reports from that period suggest that fleets of aircraft lay idle in West Pakistan, with Karachi claiming that the Indians had refused them passage through their territory; a charge that the Indian government denied. Over a week later, Yahya Khan is reported to have commented that the use of choppers in aid distribution would be pointless as they could not carry supplies.
By the time it dawned on General Yahya Khan that aid efforts were faltering, ten days after the cyclone had made landfall, hundreds of thousands who had survived the 20-foot-high waves had perished. ‘There have been mistakes, there have been delays, but by and large I’m very satisfied that everything is being done and will be done,’ Yahya Khan told the New York Times newspaper on November 22 of 1970. Four months on, about $7.5 million earmarked by the US Congress for cyclone rehabilitation had still not been handed over because of the Pakistani government’s failure to come up with a plan on how it would be distributed.
Thirty-eight years on, Bangladesh as an independent country has come a long way in its cyclone preparedness efforts. But a comparison between the 1970s Bangladesh and present-day Myanmar, and funnily enough, present-day Bangladesh, is loaded with a political significance that is difficult to ignore.
Cyclone Nargis was a category 4 tropical cyclone, implying it was of the similar intensity to cyclone Sidr which hit Bangladesh last year. But while Sidr killed just under 3,500 people, Nargis claimed over 100,000 lives, with fears that this figure could be still higher. It has emerged in the wake of cyclone Nargis that the junta in Yangon did little, if anything, to warn people of the cyclone developing off its coast, and its initial denial of a death toll more than 300, and then its efforts to block aid from Western agencies are all symptomatic of its disregard, even despise, of its own people. In comparison, and I believe this is largely the result of Bangladesh’s 15 years of democracy, widespread media coverage of coming floods or cyclones, and coverage of the ensuing humanitarian disaster has often resulted in massive evacuation efforts and aid efforts afterwards, along with economic programmes such as food-for-work to provide employment in the disaster zone.
It certainly is possible that Bangladesh’s vulnerability to cyclones over the decades has meant that the coast has far more cyclone shelters than Myanmar does, but it would be a fantastic claim to suggest that Bangladesh has enough cyclone shelters to even accommodate 10 per cent of its total coastal population. In fact, the resource-rich Myanmar with a per capita GDP of $1,691 (over triple of that in Bangladesh) would be much more likely to have better-equipped cyclone shelters, if the government had to face up to its actions in the wake of a disaster such as the one that followed Nargis.
It is in line with this thinking to say, perhaps, it would be difficult for any elected government to consider itself so immune to unpopularity that it could ignore the reconstruction and rehabilitation effort needed in the wake of cyclone Sidr as the current regime has. Especially since it is not shortage of funds that is acting as a restraint, when international funds intended for exactly this lay idle for months while the government dragged its feet on the bureaucratic necessities all through this year.
Could an elected government of the Awami League or the BNP – as venal as their power politics may be – have ignored the millions of voters of the constituencies along the coast, allowing the opposition to ratchet up discontent, being routinely embarrassed by the media, to leave their rehabilitation promises unfulfilled a year after the disaster? Perhaps, but they would be punished for it at the ballots. It is not out of benevolence but a longing to be re-elected that would have forced an elected government, any elected government, to act faster.
mahtabhaider@gmail.com
Biman’s Hajj operations:
‘unholy’ sequel
It does not look like the current board of the airline with all the nice-looking people in bespoke suits are doing any better than the lethargic bureaucrats it did away with in the name of professionalism. Things are not working out at the airline... just like it did not in the past. It is still being taken for a ride, a rather abusive one. How else would one explain such ‘unholy’ sequels of the Hajj drama, each year...every year? Imran Asif asks
AS THE Hajj season draws near, two things are inevitably heard from the ministries of religious affairs and civil aviation: all preparations have been taken to ensure proper lodging of all pilgrims in Saudi Arabia, and Biman has made all necessary arrangements to transport the pilgrims on time to and from Saudi Arabia. It still retains modesty if it is said these are nothing but lies endorsed with sheer irresponsibility and shamelessness. While the problems with lodging have been reported in a number of national dailies in the last couple of weeks, what has not made it to the newspapers because of the technical ambiguities therein is how Biman was not being honest in claiming that preparations had been taken to ensure smooth transportation of pilgrims.
On October 7, 2008, a press release issued by the religious affairs ministry stated that the first outbound Hajj flight would be operated on October 31 and that the flight would carry 542 pilgrims. At that time, Biman’s Hajj operations plan was entirely drawn up based on the two Boeing 747s that are currently leased by Biman – a 747-200 (Reg. 5N-MAD) from Kabo Air of Nigeria with 542 seats, and a 747-300 (Reg. HS-UTK) from Orient Thai Airlines of Thailand configured with 512 seats. The initial plan was that the 747 from Kabo Air would be used to carry 542 pilgrims in each of the 39 flights planned with that aircraft, and the 747 from Orient Thai Airlines would be used to carry 350 pilgrims and 162 regular passengers in each of the 30 scheduled flights during the pre-Hajj operations.
That plan soon had to be thrown to the bin because the 747 from Kabo Air, which had gone for a C-check in late August, had not been returned to Biman in time for the start of the Hajj operations (It has still not been returned at the time of this writing, on November 10, eleven days after Hajj operations began). The aircraft entered the one-year lease with Biman back in March 2008, wherein Kabo Air committed (as per Clause 4.6) that the aircraft will not be requiring any scheduled maintenance (i.e. C-Check) during the agreed operating hours or period of the lease (3,000 hours or 12 months). Since March till August 2008, the aircraft flew more than 2,200 hours with Biman, meaning that it flew over 400 hours a month in place of the minimum guaranteed hours of 25 a month. Citing this high usage, and the possibility of exceeding 3,000 hours in the midst of the Hajj operations and therefore requiring maintenance ground-time, Kabo Air took the plane for an advance C-Check on August 26 with the consent of Biman, promising to return the plane to Biman by September 25, ensuring smooth operations of Hajj flights. On August 27, a letter was given to Kabo Air signed by the director of planning of Biman (Ref: DACPM/11/2008/162) that it expected the plane back by September 25.
In the meantime, Biman got its new MD & CEO on September 17 and since the initial committed date of September 25, Kabo Air has failed on at least seven dates committed (verbally and in writing) to reposition the aircraft to Biman. Biman’s top management and its enigmatic planning department are still sitting pretty, without having taken any action against the lessor at default, while it has led to Biman carrying at least 200 fewer passengers every day since the commencement of Hajj flights, and dozens of schedule flights had to be cancelled. Even if Kabo Air repositions the aircraft by mid-November, it will be largely useless for Biman as the aircraft’s insurance certificate has expired in October, and Kabo has not yet provided any document certifying its renewal without which Biman will not be able to operate the aircraft even after repositioning.
Moreover, accepting the aircraft’s repositioning now would mean that Biman would be honouring the lease agreement that it now has every reason, and every right, to walk out of. Consequently, Biman would have to pay Kabo close to $4 million for using at least 700 hours (remainder of the 3,000 guaranteed hours at $5,300/block hour). With 4 million dollars, plus the compensation it can claim for the losses incurred, Biman can buy up three engines and make its own fifth DC-10-30 aircraft (S2-ACS) serviceable which has been lying paralysed thanks to a long-enduring and horrendous lease-settlement. If all five of Biman’s DC-10s can be made serviceable, its need for leased aircraft would be almost entirely negated.
Come to think of it, if Biman could gather the courage to dump Kabo and save the 4 million dollars, it could choose to buy the engines for their inoperative DC-10s, or could choose to opt for at least two more options to take care of the backlog of passengers which would still be economical. Assuming the total number of backlog passengers is 8,000, it can try to buy extra landing slots at Saudi Arabia and operate extra flights. If that is not possible, it can try to transport these people through other airlines in case of which even if Biman has to spend $200 per passenger as extra fares (than for what Biman has sold its tickets), it would still total out at $1.6 million and potentially save Biman $2.4 million.
On another hand, while the 747 leased from Orient Thai is still operating with Biman and is currently engaged in carrying the pilgrims, it’s inclusion in Biman’s fleet has had its share of scandals. The aircraft was leased from Orient Thai Airlines at a time when its Air Operator Certificate was suspended by the Department of Civil Aviation of Thailand, owing to the airline’s terrible records of maintenance practices and proven fraudulence of its crew’s competencies. The very aircraft leased to Biman (HS-UTK) has a horrific maintenance history in the not-so-distant past.
Moreover, Orient Thai is also at default as far as their lease agreement with Biman is concerned. Under Clause 1.4, they committed to operate flights to the Gulf and the middle-east, as well as other destinations, at the demand of Biman. On September 21, 2008 Biman had requested Orient Thai to provide the necessary special clearance popularly known as Foreign Operator Clearance (FOC) issued by the General Authority of Civil Aviation (GACA), for their proposed substitute aircraft which they are obligated to provide should their primary aircraft be grounded for technical reason beyond 24 hours. In response to Biman’s request, they stated they will provide the necessary documents for the FOC clearance by GACA for their aircraft bearing the registration HS-UTN which was meant to be the proposed substitute aircraft. Till date, they have not been able to arrange for the necessary clearance from the Saudi authorities which means that if their leased aircraft with Biman (HS-UTK) gets grounded for more than 24 hours, and even if Orient Thai provides a substitute aircraft, Biman will not be able to operate it for any flights to and from Saudi Arabia. In such an event, the picture at the airport will be far from pretty with thousands of pilgrims stranded! Is this what Biman meant when it claimed to be ‘well-prepared’?
It does not look like the current board of the airline with all the nice-looking people in bespoke suits are doing any better than the lethargic bureaucrats it did away with in the name of professionalism. Things are not working out at the airline... just like it did not in the past. It is still being taken for a ride, a rather abusive one. How else would one explain such ‘unholy’ sequels of the Hajj drama, each year...every year?
Imran Asif, currently an aviation industry consultant, has previously worked on projects with The Boeing Company, Honeywell Aerospace, and FAA’s Operational Evolution Plan (OEP) in 2004-2005
MAIN PAGE | TOP
|
|
