Dhaka: BNP Chairperson Khaleda Zia on Monday demanded the government scrap the $1 billion loan deal with India.
Describing the deal as a “pact of slavery”, she said people would not accept anything against national interests.
Khaleda, also leader of the opposition, threatened tough agitation after Eid ul-Fitr if the government fails to end public sufferings from water, gas and electricity crises.
Addressing a rally before a mass procession in the capital, she urged people to wake up and unite in efforts to bring about a “Bangladesh free from all shackles”.
After the rally, the former prime minister led the procession brought out from Paltan Maidan at 5:50pm.
She said the government has failed to implement its electoral pledges. It has turned parliament into a “fish market and zoo”.
Lambasting the loan deal with India, she said the country will have to pay a lot for this. Even those who are not born yet will have to shoulder the burden.
“Awami League had signed a pact of slavery after the Liberation War. And this loan deal is of that kind,” she added.
She alleged that the opposition is not allowed to speak in parliament and observe democratic programmes outside. The government is persecuting the BNP activists as it knows it has no ground beneath its feet. It is filing false cases against the opposition leaders and workers to cling to power, she said. www.thedailystar.net/newDesign/news-details.php?nid=150150
2. Indigenous people press for rights
Dhaka: Indigenous people demanded constitutional recognition of the ethnics at a rally in celebration of the International Day of the World’s Indigenous People at the Central Shaheed Minar in the city on Monday.
Constitutional recognition will remove all the barriers that come in the way of ensuring the basic rights and improving the social status of Adivasis, said Sanjeev Drong, general secretary of Bangladesh Indigenous People’s Forum (BIPF).
Prof Mesbah Kamal, general secretary of Bangladesh Adivasi Adhikar and Research and Development Collective, said it is necessary to appoint representatives from the Adivasi communities in the recently formed committee for constitutional amendment to speak for their benefits.
The government must give a clear roadmap concerning fast implementation of the CHT (Chittagong Hill Tracts) Peace Accord, 1997, and settlement of land disputes between Bangalee settlers and Adivasis, said the participants at the programme organised by BIPF.
Shantu Larma, chairman of Parbatya Chattagram Jana Sanghati Samity, said, the government often violates the CHT accord instead of implementing it.
Larma, also the chairman of the CHT Regional Council, opposed the plan for land survey before resolving land disputes.
The survey was supposed to begin from October 2009, and the indigenous communities opposed the plan ever since the announcement was made. www.thedailystar.net/newDesign/news-details.php?nid=150151
3. BB finds Islami Bank Foundation at fault
The Daily Star, Aug 10
Dhaka: The Islami Bank Foundation, an organisation funded by Islami Bank Bangladesh Limited, has been found operating an unauthorised micro-credit programme during a Bangladesh Bank investigation in May last.
Any micro-finance institution or non-government organisation has to obtain permission from the Micro-credit Regulatory Authority (MRA) of BB to run the credit programme.
Islami Bank Foundation is yet to get an MRA licence.
According to MRA Act, 2006, an NGO authority would face maximum Tk 5 lakh fine or one year in jail or the both if found running unlicensed micro-credit activities.
In 1991, the Islami Bank established a fund dubbed Sadaqua Tahbil, which later was reorganised as Islami Bank Foundation and registered as an NGO.
The foundation’s micro credit programme is funded under the IBBL’s corporate social responsibility (CSR) policy. The foundation also gets money from other sources.
The CSR mandates spending money for health, sanitation, non-formal education, orphanages, poverty alleviation and plantation.
The BB investigators doubted the transparency of the foundation’s spending.
The chairman of Islami Bank, Abu Nasser Muhammad Abduz Zaher told The Daily Star in mid July that the foundation no longer operated micro-credit programme. It was now running Rural Development Scheme (RDS), an Islamic micro-finance model, since December last.
He, however, admitted that the foundation distributed micro-credit among the poor till November 2009. The programme was stopped following an MRA order.
www.thedailystar.net/newDesign/news-details.php?nid=150155
3. Another woman tries to kill herself, daughter
Dhaka: In another suicide attempt in the city, a mother with her baby daughter jumped before a running train Monday near Sainik Club at Banani as her husband divorced her on Aug 2 to marry someone else.
Maksuda Begum, 32, wife of Ashraf Uddin of Araihazar upazila in Narayanganj, and her one and a half-year-old daughter Tanzina were rushed to Dhaka Medical College Hospital in critical condition. Maksuda’s nine-year-old son Nazmul, a class-II student of a pre-cadet school in the city, was present at the time and witnessed the attempted suicide.
Earlier on august 5, distraught over her husband’s second marriage, Bilashi, 28, set fire to herself and her two children Abu Raihan and Rajani in the capital’s Kamalapur.
On June 11, aggrieved by her husband’s negligence and second marriage Farzana Kabir Rita, her 12-year-old son Pabon and 10-year-old daughter Payel committed suicide by taking sedatives in the city’s Jurain.http://www.thedailystar.net/newDesign/news-details.php?nid=150186
