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Lawmakers of the Bangladesh Nationalist Party-led main opposition refrained from attending the parliament session Thursday as the speaker, Abdul Hamid, kept pending a decision on their demand to return their front row seats.
   A BNP parliamentary delegation met the speaker at the latter’s office Thursday morning and demanded that the previous seating arrangement in the house be restored giving them back the five front row seats to the left of the chair.
   ‘We met the speaker in the morning and requested him to give back the front row seats to his left to the opposition bench,’ opposition chief whip Jainal Abedin Faruk told New Age. ‘He told us that he would make a decision after discussing the issue with the ruling party.’
   Senior opposition lawmaker MK Anwar led the six-member delegation.
   The lawmakers of BNP, Bangladesh Jamaat-e-Islami and Bangladesh Jatiya Party held a meeting in the meeting room of the leader of the opposition at 4:00pm seemingly waiting for a decision of the speaker until the parliament session resumed at 4:45pm.
   ‘We have decided not to join the parliament for the day [Thursday] as the speaker did not convey us anything till 5:00pm,’ he said at 5:15pm after the meeting.
   The opposition MPs will meet again to set a strategy before the next sitting of parliament on Sunday or Monday next week, he said.
   The lawmakers of BNP and its allies on Wednesday staged a walkout from parliament in protest at the new seating arrangement giving four instead of nine front row seats to them to the left of the speaker.
   The immediate-past speaker Muhammad Jamiruddin Sircar allocated the nine front row seats to the main opposition. The new speaker on Wednesday morning changed the seating layout giving five seats to two ministers and three senior leaders of the ruling Awami League-led alliance pushing BNP MPs back to the second and third rows.
   Speaker Abdul Hamid said Thursday afternoon that the opposition lawmakers had initially demanded return of the five front row seats. ‘Finally in the discussion, they trimmed down the demand to three seats,’ he claimed.
   ‘I have told them that I can change the seating plan again if the ruling party agrees to vacate the seats,’ the speaker said. ‘Otherwise, I have nothing to do.’
   Hamid said he had already conveyed the opposition lawmakers’ demands to ruling Awami League’s chief whip Abdus Shahid.
   Shahid informed the leader of the house and prime minister, Sheikh Hasina, about the meeting between the speaker and the main opposition, a treasury bench member told New Age.
   He also informed the prime minister about the demand of the opposition.
   The prime minister and the speaker are likely to discuss the issue, possibly over phone, the treasury bench member said.
   In the 2001 parliament, when BNP was in power, all 10 seats in the front row to the left of the speaker were allocated to opposition lawmakers. They were the then leader of the opposition Sheikh Hasina, senior opposition MP Zillur Rahman, present speaker Abdul Hamid, senior AL leaders Abdur Razzak, Abdul Jalil, Suranjit Sengupta, Sheikh Fazlul Karim Selim, Dewan Farid Gazi, Jatiya Party faction chairman Anwar Hossain Manju and senior JP presidium member Rawshan Ershad.

presidential election will be held on February 16 as the incumbent Iajuddin Ahmed has served out his tenure long before.
   The Election Commission on Thursday announced the schedule for the presidential election, setting February 8 as the last date for nomination submission.
   According to schedule, the nomination papers will be scrutinised on February 9 and the last date for the withdrawal of candidature is February 11.
   The commission announced the schedule after the chief election commissioner, ATM Shamsul Huda, in consultation with the parliament speaker, Abdul Hamid. The commission earlier sent a letter to the speaker proposing February 18 for the voting.
   According to the constitution, the election needs to be held within 30 days from the date of the first sitting of the parliament, which is January 25.
   There will be no election if only one candidate contests for the post of the head of the state, the official said adding this time there might be only one candidate for the post.
   The prime minister, Sheikh Hasina, at the national assembly building on January 3 said her party would nominate its presidium member Zillur Rahman for the post of the president.
   ‘He [Zillur] is a senior member of our party. We want to give him recognition for his long-time contribution to the party and the politics. He has played an important role in all our struggles, including the language movement,’ Hasina said.
   The people opposing the name for the presidential candidate and seconding him should be lawmakers, according to the law.
   In the last presidential election, the Election Commission declared Iajuddin Ahmed elected unopposed as president of the republic on September 5, 2002.

The police on Thursday recovered the dismembered body parts of a young man from different places in Lalbagh.
   ‘We have so far recovered 14 pieces of the body but have not found the head and a hand,’ said the officer-in-charge of Lalbagh police station, Nabajoti Khisa.
   The parts were found in different places from Azimpur to Shahidnagar and their recovery lasted from 8:00am to 5:00pm.
   Packed in plastic bags, three of the parts were found in the drain beside Building no 35 and 33 of Azimpur Mouchak Colony between 8:00am and 1:00pm. Eight more parts were found in the drain in front of the house of one Abdul Matin at Shahidnagar at about 3:30pm, and three more parts in the drain at Killar Mor at about 5:00pm, said the police.
   The police, after collecting the body parts that were chopped off, sent them to the Mitford Hospital’s morgue for autopsy.
   But the head and a hand could not be found till 8:00pm.
   The local people suspect that the body might be that of a phone-fax trader, Ali Asgar, who used to live at Killar Mor.
   Family members said that Asgar left his residence on Wednesday evening and has not returned.
   On getting wind of the recovery of body parts, local people and neighbours went to the police station and identified them as belonging to Ali.
   After the initial shock, the people became angry and started looking for Ali’s friends. They beat up three of the suspects and handed them over to a team of the Rapid Action Battalion which was on a patrol in the locality at about 4:00pm.
   Two of the suspects, Zahir and Saiful, were handed over to the Lalbagh police station by the RAB team.
   The police, however, said that the identity of the decedent cannot be confirmed until the head is recovered.

Parliament on Thursday night approved unanimously, in the absence of the opposition lawmakers, a resolution seeking speedy prosecution of the 1971 war criminals.
   ‘The resolution seeking trial of the war criminals has been approved unanimously,’ pronounced the speaker, Abdul Hamid, after the house voted ‘yes’ to the proposal moved by Mahmud us Samad Chowdhury, a ruling Awami League lawmaker for Sylhet 3 constituency.
   The prime minister, Sheikh Hasina, and a number of senior ruling party lawmakers termed the private members’ proposal very important saying that trial of the war criminals had become a national demand and that it was also an election pledge of the AL.
   Lawmakers of the Bangladesh Nationalist Party-led alliance remained absent from the house for the second consecutive day Thursday over a seating arrangement dispute.
   The minister in charge of liberation war affairs, ABM Tajul Islam, however, requested Mahmud us Samad Chowdhury, who piloted the proposal, to withdraw it citing that the government had already initiated the process for trial of the war criminals.
   But the house, attended by the lawmakers of the ruling Awami League and its allies Jatiya Party, Workers Party and Jatiya Samajtantrik Dal and an independent lawmaker, opposed the idea of withdrawing the proposal.
   Rising to his feet, lawmaker Suranjit Sengupta said that the cabinet of prime minister Sheikh Hasina had already decided to try the war criminals.
   When the process has already begun, it will be unnecessary to withdraw the proposal. ‘There is no legal problem in passing the resolution.’
   Tofail Ahmed, a veteran parliamentarian of AL, said the people had voted Awami League to power to see the war criminals brought to justice. It has become a demand of all. ‘Since it is our election pledge, we should approve the proposal,’ he said requesting the prime minister to speak.
   Sheikh Hasina then took the floor and extended her support to the proposal saying that she had ordered the ministries and persons concerned to begin the process to bring the war criminals to justice.
   ‘Trial of the war criminals has become a demand of the day.
   We have had discussions with persons concerned. We are gathering evidence of how other countries have dealt with war criminals,’ the prime minister said adding that she collected names of a panel of international experts on war crime tribunals.
   The foreign ministry has taken the initiative to this end.
   ‘Trial of the war criminals will take place on this soil,’ Hasina said amidst thumping on the desks by her deputies in the house.
   Planning minister AK Khandaker and former home minister Rafiqul Islam and also took part in the supplementary discussion asking the house to approve the resolution to pave the way for fulfilling the people’s long-standing demand for trial of the war criminals.
   AL lawmakers AKM Rahmat Ullah, Enamul Haq, KH Rashiduzzaman and Golam Dastagir Gazi and WP lawmakers Rashed Khan Menon and Fazle Hossain Badsha also took part in the discussion.
   Earlier on Wednesday, the prime minister sought the United Nations’ assistance to try the war criminals of 1971.
   During Bangladesh’s war of independence against Pakistani occupation forces in 1971, according to historians, three million people were killed, 2,00,000 women were violated and tens of thousands of homes were torched by Pakistani forces and their local collaborators.
   An early initiative to prosecute the war crimes was called off after the 1975 political changeover with the assassination of Sheikh Mujibur Rahman, the country’s founding president.
   Bangladesh Sector Commanders’ Forum, a platform of 1971 war veterans, revealed last year that 11,000 indicted war criminals were released from jail a few months after Mujib’s assassination.

Some activists of the unit of the Bangladesh Chhatra League in Shahjalal University of Science and Technology took possession of more than one hundred rooms in two dormitories on Wednesday midnight.
   Campus sources said supporters of the Raju-Asad and Atiq-Suman groups of the BCL, the student wing of the Awami League, occupied the rooms in Shah Paran Hall and the second Student Hall after breaking the doors’ locks at about 12:00am on Wednesday.
   Earlier, the rooms were occupied by the activists of the Jatiyatabadi Chhatra Dal, student wing of the Bangladesh Nationalist Party. But they left the rooms immediately after the debacle of the BNP in the December 29 parliamentary elections, said campus sources.
   But clashes may take place between the activists of the BCL over the rooms as some leaders of various BCL groups have protested against the forcible occupation of those rooms.
   Leaders of the Shakib and Soumitra groups of the BCL have described the occupation of the dormitory rooms as ‘unethical and anarchic’.
   They claimed that the BCL will not bear any responsibility for such anti-organisational activities which were strictly forbidden by the BCL’s central committee’s leaders, said sources in the groups.
   Syed Hasanuzzaman, provost of the Shah Paran Hall, said he was informed of the stealthy occupation of the rooms by media men. “The incident was completely illegal and the university authorities will take necessary steps in this regard,’ he added.

The finance ministry, to make an early start, will begin holding meetings on the political government’s budget with the various ministries and divisions from February 8 and continue to do so till March 1.
   The meetings will discuss revision of the 2008-09 budget and also initiate the process for preparing next year’s budget, said sources in the finance ministry.
   In formulating the last national budget, the finance ministry started its budget meetings on February 12.
   Besides the finance ministry, to discuss expenditure planning under the Medium-Term Budgetary Framework, will hold meetings with the concerned ministries from February 5 to February 22.
   These meetings will finalise the agreed resource ceilings for the 2008-09 revised budget and the budgets of the next two fiscal years for 20 ministries and divisions that have been given a certain measure of autonomy for expenditure planning under the MTBF.
   Of the total 39 ministries and divisions of the government, the energy ministry, public works ministry, power division and bridge division joined the MTBF bandwagon of 20 in the current fiscal year.
   Officials of the finance ministry told New Age on Thursday that the formal budget-making preparation meetings would be held to achieve the national goals and reduce poverty through efficient use of national resources.
   The finance secretary will chair the MTBF budget meetings with the finance ministry which is also preparing a schedule for consultation on the budget with other ministries and divisions, and stakeholders including economists, businesspeople and the civil society.
   A circular on the budgetary meetings will be issued next week by the finance ministry, said sources.
   ‘The consultation will be more significant this year as a military-backed government was running the country for two years, and the budget will be announced in the Parliament after a two-year interval, said an official.
   The revised and future budgets will focus on the AL-led grand alliance’s election manifesto which emphasised development of the agriculture and information technology sectors, said the official, adding that more money will be allocated to reduce the prices of essential commodities.
   Earlier, the finance ministry in a circular meant for budget planning indicated that civil servants’ salaries would not increase by more than 6 per cent and house rent by 5 per cent for the 2009-10 fiscal year.
   Ceilings have also been set for festival and medical allowances, while services and supply expenditures will be estimated on the real expenditures of six months of the current fiscal year that will end on June 30, 2009.

The amount of 4,285 crore earmarked in the current budget for subsidising the prices of fertilisers will now exceed Tk 6,000 crore, mainly to provide bailout packages to the importers of non-urea fertilisers imported earlier at higher prices.
   Sources in the agriculture ministry said an amount of about Tk 2,700 crore estimated as subsidies for non-urea fertilisers would be distributed among the importers on conclusion of the current Boro cultivation season. The rest, out of more than Tk 6,000 crore subsidy requirement, would be spent to provide subsidy on urea fertiliser.
   The finance ministry has in principle agreed to provide the additional amount required for providing subsidies for non-urea fertilisers at a rate of around 55 per cent, apart from meeting the expenses to make up for the administered price of urea to support the farmers.
   ‘We have already taken account of the stocks of non-urea fertilisers, names of the importers and the rough amounts to be needed for subsidising the prices. The subsidy amounts will be distributed after the fertilisers will reach the farmers,’ an agriculture ministry official told New Age on Sunday.
   The official ruled out any possibility of forgery or drawing of the subsidy money based on false declaration. The government has decided to provide the subsidy as a bailout package to the importers in view of the recent fall in prices in the international market, he added.
   Some economists said the new government, while providing farmers with fertilisers at subsidised rates quickly, had shouldered the responsibility of ‘financing losses’ of the importers, which, according to them, was a practice contradictory to the principle of free market economy.
   And when the government has reduced the price of triple super phosphate fertiliser to Tk 40 a kilogram by providing subsidy, a private company has offered the fertiliser at Tk 30 per kilogram, without any cash support from the government.
   ‘Yes! It is loss-financing as the government is providing the bailout package for the stocks of fertilisers imported earlier at much higher costs than the current international market prices. The government has to think of other options in future,’ Anu Muhammad, a professor of the Jahangirnagar University, told New Age.
   Economist Ananya Raihan, too, described the subsidy for non-urea fertilisers as ‘somewhat loss-financing’ because of the government’s compulsion to provide farm subsidy and reach the agricultural inputs to the doorsteps of the farmers in time. He is for increasing the number of importers to escape the cartel of a few importers.
   The agriculture minister earlier announced 55 per cent subsidy amounting to about Tk 1,236.51 crore for non-urea fertilisers, effectively bringing down the rate of triple super phosphate to Tk 40 from Tk 75-80, of murate of potash to Tk 35 from Tk 65-75 and of di-ammonium phosphate to Tk 45 from Tk 80-85 per kilogram.
   However, Poton Traders, in a recent newspaper advertisement, offered the price of triple super phosphate at Tk 1,450 for each bag of 50 kilograms 0f TSP without any subsidy from the government. It has a stock of 15,000 tonnes of TSP, the company official, Nazmul Alam Badal, said when contacted.
   The market watchers said the price of triple super phosphate had become less than half, compared to the price range of $1020 and $1060 a tonne a few months back when the Bangladeshi importers procured the non-urea fertilisers for their stocks.
   The importers’ stock of TSP stands at about 3 lakh tonnes as against a demand of 1.34 lakh tonnes for January-March period. They also currently have about 1.8 lakh tonnes of MoP and 46,000 tonnes of DAP fertilisers compared to the period’s requirement of 1.08 lakh tonnes of MoP and 40,000 tonnes of DAP.
   The private importers earlier appealed to the government to help offset their losses due to drastic fall in prices in the world market by providing subsidy. In response, the then agriculture adviser, AMM Shawkat Ali, said that the government would discourage opening of letters of credit for importing fertilisers to protect their interests.
   In the current system of distribution of subsidies for non-urea fertilisers, the agriculture ministry hands over the subsidy money to the private importers to reduce prices at the farmers’ level.
   However, justifying the decision on providing subsidy through the traders, agriculture minister, Matia Chowdhury, said it was a better policy to subsidise local farmers and traders instead of giving the money to foreigners to buy food grains.
   ‘We are not here to quarrel with the traders and dealers. We believe support should be given to the Bangladeshis despite the chances of leakage,’ she told a workshop at the Bangladesh Institute of Development Studies immediately after announcing the subsidies.
   Asked about the solutions to the problems of agricultural input subsidy distribution, Anu Muhammad suggested elimination of dependency on the imported fertilisers through research and investments while Ananya Raihan recommended open market sales of all fertilisers introducing a transparent system for distribution of subsidy money.

The annual three-day Bishwa Ijtema, the second largest Muslim congregation after Hajj, begins today on the bank of the River Turag at Tongi, 20 kilometres off the capital, amid heightened security.
   Hundreds of people from across the country have already reached the place and many others are on their way to attend the congregation.
   Preparations have all been made for the holding of the gathering of the Muslims. Besides the law enforcement agencies and local administration, various local organisations and agencies have taken up programmes for a successful holding of the congregation.
   The Gazipur district administration, the police and the Rapid Action Battalion have set up control rooms. Forty-eight closed-circuit television cameras have been set up at different points.
   The police said at least 12,000 law enforcement personnel, led by eight superintendents of police, had been deployed at the Ijtema ground. The lawmen deployed include 800 Rapid Action Battalion personnel. Seventeen entrances to the ground have been equipped with metal detectors.
   The battalion also set up nine observation towers. It will patrol the area by boat and by two helicopters round-the-clock Mobile courts will be run to keep law and order and to monitor the hotels and restaurants. The Tongi municipality arranged supply water.
   A canopy has been put up over an area of 165 acres. Separate tents have been set up on the north-west of the venue for foreigners. Organisers said people from the United States, India, Pakistan, Malaysia, Philippines, Maldives and Saudi Arabia had reached the venue.
   According to the organisers, preliminary activities of the congregation had started after the fajr prayers on Thursday although it would formally begin this morning.
   The ground has been divided into 32 blocks; there were 26 blocks last time. The main dais has been set up in the west of the ground from where scholars from India, Pakistan, Iran, Iraq, Afghanistan and Saudi Arabia would deliver sermons.
   Organizers expect about 50 lakh people to join the akheri munajat (final prayers).
   The president, the prime minister and the leader of the opposition in parliament are likely to join the akheri munajat.

India is speeding a nearly $1 billion domestic weapons development programme to modernise its armed forces, the defence research department said on Thursday, following renewed tensions with Pakistan over the attacks in Mumbai.
   The plans include inducting 124 main battle tanks for the Indian army by December, the first of a batch of locally-made combat aircraft for the navy also by the end of the year, and unmanned aerial vehicles to boost border surveillance.
   ‘There is a certain push now to complete projects on time and deliver the goods for low intensity battles or to counter bigger security threats in the region,’ Suranjan Pal, a spokesman of the government-run Defence Research and Development Organisation, said.
   Tensions between India and Pakistan mounted after the attacks in Mumbai in November, which New Delhi said were carried out by Pakistani nationals and must have had support from Pakistani state agencies.
   Since the Mumbai attacks, local media has highlighted the many antiquated weapons system that India has, from artillery to tanks, and poor surveillance capabilities.
   ‘India’s military capability had been shrinking as modernisation efforts were moving very slowly, but now there is more interest being shown,’ C Uday Bhaskar, a strategic affairs expert, said.
   The modernisation plans include developing the Agni-5 missile, capable of carrying a nuclear warhead and hitting targets 5,000 km away, and torpedoes and planes for the navy.
   India is also one of the world’s biggest arms importers, but government officials and experts said the priority was to boost indigenous capacity and reduce reliance on foreign suppliers.
   ‘Foreign countries are generally not interested in sharing critical technology with us, so we are pushing more for indigenous development,’ Pal said.
   The DRDO has often been criticised in the past by experts for delays on key projects, including the Light Combat Aircraft and an Airborne Early Warning and Control System.
   The naval version of the LCA will enter service in December this year while the air force will get 20 planes next year. The aircraft is a supersonic, all-weather fighter which has been under development for more than two decades.

The Election Commission in a circular has requested government agencies, including the Bangladesh Bank, not to make national identity cards mandatory for services they provide as card distribution was yet to be completed.
   An estimated three million citizens aged above 18 years are yet to get their national identity cards either they are yet to collect the cards or they have failed to register as voters, official in the Election Commission secretariat said.
   There has been widespread allegation of mistakes, especially in spelling, in the cards prepared during the registration on the electoral roll in between August 2007 and July 2008. More than 81 million people were registered as voters.
   The Bangladesh Bank in the past week asked all the commercial banks to make mandatory the submission of the photocopy of the national identity card for the loan applications to check fraud by defaulters.
   The Credit Information Bureau of the central bank in the past week in a letter requested commercial bank managing directors to collect the photocopy of the identity cards of about 11 lakh clients, who have taken bank loans, and submit the cards to the bureau by March 31.
   The Election Commission in its letter issued on Wednesday to the Cabinet Division, Bangladesh Bank, secretary to the President’s office, all the ministries, divisions and relevant organisations asked them not to make the submission of the photocopy of the national identity mandatory until the government publishes a gazette notification in this regard.
   The commission said the distribution of identity cards in some areas of the country, including the Dhaka City Corporation areas, was yet to be completed although cards of all the registered voters have been completed.
   But the commission has noticed that most banks have made the submission of the photocopy of the national identity card mandatory for bank accounts and loans. Rajdhani Unnayan Kartripakkha, the passport office and other agencies offering public services have also made such submission mandatory without any alternatives.
   The commission in its circular referred to a provision in the National Identities Registration Authority which said submission of photocopy or furnishing of the identity cards could not be made mandatory for such services until the distribution of cards is completed.
   As not all the citizens have been provided with identity cards and the government is yet to publish any gazette notification in this regard, furnishing identity cards or submission of their photocopies for tasks such as opening bank accounts and getting credit, and services offered by Rajuk and the passport office should not be mandatory, the circular reads.
   The project director of the Preparation of Electoral Roll with Photographs and Facilitating the Issuance of National Identity Card, Brigadier General Shahadat Hossain Chowdhury, told New Age on Thursday more then two lakh identity cards mainly in the Dhaka City Corporation areas remained at their disposal for distribution as the persons concerned had not collected them.
   ‘The project will begin updating the electoral roll with photos and distributing the national identity cards immediately,’ he said. ‘Pilot programmes will be undertaken before updating the electoral roll and national identity cards. The first such pilot programme will be done in places around Dhaka.’
   According to the Voter Roll Ordinance, updating should be done annually in January. ‘But because of the national and upazila polls, the Election Commission could not do the job within the timeframe this year,’ Humayun Kabir, secretary to the EC secretariat, said.
   Updating will begin after the city corporation elections in Dhaka and Chittagong and subsequent municipal elections, beginning in April, he said.

The standing committee of the Bangladesh Nationalist Party, the highest policymaking body of the party, will sit on Sunday to devise ways and means for reorganising the party in the aftermath of its election debacle.
   The party chief, Khaleda Zia, announced at Comilla on January 9 that all the committees of all tiers of the party and its associate bodies would be dissolved from the grassroots level and reorganise them through elections.
   ‘The issues of reorganising the party units at grassroots level might come up for discussion at the standing committee meeting as it has become an imperative and the chairperson wants it,’ said the party standing committee member, Khandkar Mosharraf Hossain, Thursday afternoon.
   As part of the move, presidents and general secretaries of the district units and leaders of upazila units have been summoned to Dhaka to have discussions with the party chairperson from February 3.
   The meetings have been planned to get the true picture and recent activities of the grassroots units and their leaders.
   ‘We have already sent letters to the leaders of district and thana units asking them to attend meetings with the chairperson and other leaders. The meetings will begin February 3,’ said Nazrul Islam Khan, the party’s joint secretary general.
   ‘Before the meetings, the standing committee will sit Sunday to devise ways and means for revitalising the party,’ he added.
   The party high command has already collected information on the activities of the lower units which will also be submitted to the chairperson before her exchange of views with the grassroots leaders, party insiders said.
   Leaders of the district or upazila committees who failed to discharge their organisational duties properly would face action after the exchange of views, they said adding that any change in the committees would be done in consultation with grassroots leaders.
   Tenures of almost all committees, excluding the national standing committee, of the BNP have already expired as the party did not hold elections to the committees in the last two years. The tenures of all committees are generally two years.
   The party had held its last central council session 15 years ago in 1993 at Manik Mia Avenue in the capital, although, according to its constitution it is supposed to hold council every two years.
   The party had held a representatives’ meeting with the participation of the members of the national executive committee in 2006.

Kuwait’s parliament on Thursday approved in principle a new labour law that provides the emirate’s 2.35 million foreign workers better conditions but fails to scrap the controversial sponsor system.
   Of the 44 members present, 43 voted for the bill while one abstained. If approved in the second and final reading after two weeks, the bill will replace a 45-year-old law that was criticised as being favourable to employers.
   The bill, which has been under revision in parliament for more than a decade, stipulates more rights for labourers working in the private sector including better annual leave, end of service indemnities and holidays.
   It also stipulates tougher penalties, including jail terms, for businessmen who trade in visas and who recruit expatriate workers and then fail to provide them with jobs, and those who fail to pay salaries regularly.
   Kuwait is home to 2.35 million foreigners, more than two-thirds of them Asians, and over one million native citizens.
   The bill requires the government to introduce a minimum wage for certain jobs, especially in the lower-paid categories.
   During the debate, a number of MPs criticised the bill as still being favourable to employers and called for the introduction of a mandatory minimum wage.
   ‘Under the bill, employers can still fire their staff easily. We must involve the judiciary in such matters,’ said Islamist MP Mohammad al-Mutairi.
   ‘There must be a minimum wage especially for poor expatriate labourers in the law which should also guarantee they obtain their pay regularly,’ added MP Adnan Abdulsamad.
   The bill fails to address the much-criticised sponsor system under which all foreign workers must be sponsored by a Kuwaiti employer, thus keeping expatriates at the mercy of their bosses. Other oil-rich Gulf states apply the same system.
   The minister of social affairs and labour, Bader al-Duwaila, said in September the emirate was considering alternatives for the system to meet international labour standards.
   The statement came after violent protests by foreign workers demanding better conditions.
   Parliament’s human rights committee had also called for a review of the sponsorship system to try to stop employers from abusing hundreds of thousands of foreign labourers.

The affected people of Barapukuria want the coal production to continue from the mine despite the land subsidence in the area, for which they also want proper compensations, said the state minister for power and energy, Shamsul Haque Tuku, on Thursday.
   He said that the government would take steps so that each of the affected
   people of the mine area got proper compensations as per the recommendations made by the local people.
   ‘People in the Barapukuria coal mine area are worried following the land subsidence due to the mining. But they want the mine to continue production and demand their compensations and rehabilitation,’ he said at a press briefing at PID on his experience during a visit to the underground coal mine and adjacent areas in Dinajpur on Tuesday.
   Tuku, adviser to the prime minister, Tawfiq-e-Elahi Chowdhury and the state minister for forest and environment, Mostafizur Rahman Fizar, visited the coal mine area as a follow-up to the prime minister, Sheikh Hasina’s directive for taking steps to compensate the affected people of Barapukuria.
   Fizar said that people of the area were panicked as big cracks were created at their houses and subsidence occurred in around 40-50 acres of land.
   He said that after talking with the local people they had decided that people of each of the villages would form their own committees to assess the damages and find out what compensation would be acceptable to them.
   ‘These committees’ recommendations will be placed before the prime minister. The prime
   minister will directly listen to them. If needed separate bank accounts will be opened for each of the affected people so that they get the compensations without the intervention of any middlemen,’ he said.
   Fizar blamed the previous BNP-Jamaat government for ‘not informing the local people of the possible land subsidence in the mine area.’
   When asked if the government had any plan about the nearby Phulbari coal field, Tuku said that they did not think about the issue yet.
   The power secretary, Nasiruddin Ahmed and Awami League activist, Professor Hossain Mansur, were also present on the occasion.

The external affairs minister of India, Pranab Mukherjee, has cut short his planned visit to Dhaka as he will stay in the
   capital on February 9 for less than 12 hours, foreign ministry officials confirmed to New Age on Thursday.
   Earlier both the foreign ministry and Indian High Commission had ruled out any change in the plan to visit Dhaka on February 8-9, despite speculations of uncertainty over the tour after Prime Minister Manmohan Singh underwent a bypass operation on Saturday and Pranab was given the charge of discharging his duties.
   Pranab will arrive in Dhaka in the morning on February 9 in a goodwill visit to convey the Indian prime minister’s felicitations to Bangladesh’s newly elected Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina. He is scheduled to leave for Delhi the same day in the evening.
   According to the tentative schedule, the Pranab will talk with his Bangladesh counterpart, Dipu Moni, and have a working lunch with some senior Cabinet members.
   A high official of the foreign ministry told
   New Age that the Indian high commissioner in Dhaka, Pinak Ranjan Chakravarti, has already apprised the ministry of the change in Pranab’s scheduled visit.
   ‘Though we were not informed of the shortened duration of the visit, we think that the Indian minister will stay here for a few hours only due to his
   additional responsibilities in the Indian Cabinet
   after Manmohan Singh’s heart surgery,’ said an official.
   Pranab on Wednes-
   day postponed his scheduled visit to Mauritius that was to begin from Thursday.
   He returned from an unscheduled visit to Colombo on Wednesday and was expected to go to Mauritius for a two-day visit.