B1 | BusinessThe next � scal year budget speech may include steps to establish good governance in the country’s banking sector, said Finance Minister AMA Muhith.

5 | NewsThe people, who lost their lands during the construction of the Hatirjheel-Begunbari project, have to wait another year for

compensation as the Rajdhani Unnayan Kartripakkha (Rajuk) cannot hand the � ats over to them before June 2015 because

of confusion over the actual number of evicted people and some internal problems.

7 | Long FormJesus’ teachings o� er good news for the righteous, whether they are the poor and marginalised or the rich who are generous with their bounty. All can � nd

a place in the kingdom. Yet there is little comfort for those who expect that their wealth alone will save them. The story of Lazarus and the rich man is a reminder

of the fate of the wealthy who ignore the poor in their midst (Lk 16:19-31).

9 | WorldThe US decision to release � ve Taliban detainees from Guantanamo Bay in order to recover a soldier held in Afghanistan sparked a furor in Washington, with Republicans warning Sunday the move put Americans at risk.

14 | SportFIFA oversaw the � nal World Cup test event at the Corinthians arena on Sunday and o� cials said there was ‘a week and a half of hard work’ ahead to get the stadium ready for the opening match of the tournament on June 12.

20 pages plus 16-page T-Mag tabloid | Price: Tk12

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TUESDAY, JUNE 3, 2014 | www.dhakatribune.com | SECOND EDITION

Joishthya 20, 1421Shaaban 4, 1435Regd. No. DA 6238Vol 2, No 64

TMAG | BOOK VS MOVIES 11 | THE MIGHTY PEN 13 | STREAK UP FOR CHALLENGE 8 | RUSSIA TO SUBMIT UKRAINE RESOLUTION

‘Prime suspect of Ekram murder� ees to India with police help’n Mohammad Jamil Khan

back from Feni

The prime suspect in the murder of Fulgazi chairman Ekramul Haque � ed the country by crossing the border into India, allegedly with the help of the po-lice, claimed local sources.

The suspect, Feni district Awami League Joint General Secretary Jahang-ir Mohammad Adel, crossed the border through the Bilunia point of the dis-trict’s Parshuram upazila last week, ac-cording to several sources in Feni. They also said local lawmaker Nizam Uddin Hazari helped Adel escape while local police assisted in exchange for a huge sum of money.

Ziaul Haque Jashim, elder brother of Ekram, told the Dhaka Tribune that

Adel was helped to � ee the country as his arrest would have revealed the con-nection of a top ruling party leader of Feni with the killing.

Jashim also expressed his suspicion that the investigation into his brother’s death might come to an end with the ar-rests of Jihad Chowdhury and BNP lead-er Mahtab Uddin Chowdhury Minar. He further urged for transferring the case to the Criminal Investigation Department and for not stopping the probe without tracing all the masterminds.

On May 20, a group of criminals killed Ekram by shooting and setting � re on his vehicle in front of witnesses at the Academy Road in Feni.

Following the incident, police have arrested 23 people including Jihad Chowdhury, an alleged mastermind

and joint secretary of Fulgazi upazila AL unit, and BNP leader Mahtab Uddin Chowdhury Minar, the alleged � nancier.

The name of Adel – a known associ-ate of Feni 2 MP Nizam – has come up during the interrogations of Jihad and others arrestees, as well as from the analysis of mobile phone calls records.

Even after Adel’s connection with the crime came to the fore, he had al-legedly been travelling out on the open until May 28; but disappeared after that day. He reportedly crossed the border through Bilunia, only 30km from Feni town.

Iqbal Reza Ripon, a ward councillor of Parshuram municipality, said many of the locals had seen Adel cross the border in the early hours of Thursday.

PAGE 2 COLUMN 1

The initial plan wasto kill just twon Ashif Islam Shaon

A police o� cial involved with the in-vestigation into the Narayanganj seven murders have said the criminals’ initial plan was to kill only two; the rest were killed to cover the trails.

He said the abductors had been pri-marily instructed to pick up city panel mayor Nazrul Islam and his close friend Moniruzzaman Swapon.

Nur Hossain, who provided the money, had a feud with Nazrul but he wanted to see Swapan’s end as well be-cause he helped Nazrul in many ways.

Nur contracted RAB for killing those two; the preparations were made ac-cordingly. Two RAB o� cials worked at

the � eld level and another kept contact over phone.

But the entire plan went wrong when the RAB men picked up seven people instead of two because of “una-voidable circumstances,” said an inves-tigator, who preferred not to be named.

One RAB member was assigned to keep an eye on Nazrul on the premis-es of the local district court. But he got caught and Nazrul’s aides handed him over to police.

Before that, the RAB man informed the team that was waiting to abduct, that two cars were heading their way.

The RAB o� cials on spot decided to pick up � ve people instead of two;

PAGE 2 COLUMN 1

Dhaka, Beijing to seal the deal on deep-sea port Hasina goes to China on June 6n Sheikh Shahariar Zaman

Bangladesh wants to conclude the ne-gotiations with China on construction of a deep-sea port at Sonadia in Cox’s Bazar during the visit of Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina there.

“We have analysed three proposals [for deep-sea port] that were submit-ted to the government and we found the Chinese proposal is the best. We hope to sign an instrument with China during the visit of the prime minister in Beijing,” said a senior o� cial of the Foreign Ministry.

Sheikh Hasina is going to China on June 6 on a � ve-day trip and is sched-uled to return home on June 11.

Bangladesh has long been negoti-ating the mega-project and invited all interested countries to submit their pro-

posals and three countries – the Nether-lands, United Arab Emirates and China – showed interest, said the o� cial.

“They made presentations before the high-powered committee headed by the principal secretary where for-eign and shipping secretaries are also members,” he said.

After evaluation, the committee found that the Chinese proposal was the best, he added.

“During the visit, we would like to hand over a ‘letter of intent’ to the Chinese side to build the port,” the of-� cial said, adding that the multi-billiondollar project at Sonadia can be set up by a single country or it can be a con-sortium.

“We want to keep it open. Depend-ing on the situation, a consortium can be formed to build the port following

consultation between Bangladesh and China.”

When asked about geopolitical pres-sure, he said, “Bangladesh should � rst consider its national interest. We wait-ed too long for the project.”

An inter-ministerial meeting on the prime minister’s visit to China was held at the Foreign Ministry yesterday with Foreign Secretary Md Shahidul Haque in the chair and various issues, includ-ing deep-sea port, were discussed in the meeting.

Bangladesh has two sea ports – Chit-tagong and Mongla – and felt the need to have the deep-sea port because of the growing demand from business people.

At present, both the ports handle over $60 billion of trade, which is grow-ing at a faster rate.

Hasina’s visitThe prime minister will � y to Kun-ming from Dhaka to attend the South Asia Expo and will have an interaction with Chinese businessmen to encour-age them to make more investment in Bangladesh, said another o� cial of the Foreign Ministry.

“She will � y to Beijing on June 8 and will have o� cial talks with Chinese Prime Minister Li Keqiang,” he said. They will declare a joint statement af-ter the meeting.

She will also call on Chinese Presi-dent Xi Jinping and will have another interaction with Chinese businessmen, he said.

“The primary focus of the visit will be to lure investment and cooperation in deep-sea port, power and infrastruc-ture,” he added.

Bangladesh has already awarded Padma Bridge project to a Chinese com-pany and signed a contract yesterday.

Bangladesh has multi-dimensional cooperation with China and it is the big-gest trading partner of Bangladesh with two-way trade is over $10 billion but it is heavily tilted towards Beijing. l

‘Depending on the situation, a consortium can be formed tobuild the port’

City life falters as waterlogging continues totake toll n Abu Hayat Mahmud

The government initiatives to get rid of water-logging in the capital have prov-en unsuccessful, with the perennial problem running its own course this monsoon also.

In the wake of yesterday’s rainfall, many areas across the capital were in-undated and the stagnant water began to take its toll on the city life.

As usual, Shukrabad, Indira Road, Rajabazar, Mouchak, Malibagh, Mogh-bazar, Shantinagar, Badda, Baridhara, Natun Bazar, Mirpur, Mohammadpur, Rayerbazar, Hazaribagh, Old Dhaka, Sayedabad and Jatrabari areas went un-der knee-deep water, leaving the city dwellers marooned for the time being.

A series of irregularities, plus negli-gence on the part of local government bodies in maintaining the city’s drain-age system are allegedly responsible for the woes of the city dwellers.

Even the prime minister’s directives to local government bodies – Dhaka Water Supply and Sewerage Authority, Dhaka North and South City Corpora-tions, Rajuk, PWD and WDB – to imme-diately take steps to address the water-logging produced no desired e� ect.

In an e� ort to rid the capital of wa-terlogging, Dhaka Wasa, the prime state-owned agency to maintain the city’s drainage and sewerage system, set up pumping stations in Kallyanpur, Dholaikhal, Rampura and Kamlapur to drain o� rainwater, but appeared inef-fective.

In addition, the Dhaka Water Supply and Sanitation project in association with the World Bank, approved by the government in September 2008 could not make a di� erence.

As part of the project, the Wasa took steps to reclaim 26 canals from the grabbers, but failed to recover properly.

Though the Dhaka South City Cor-poration (DSCC) and Dhaka North City Corporation (DNCC) have long been installing pipes along the storm drains in di� erent areas in the city, the e� orts did little to address the waterlogging.

The city residents attributed the longstanding problem to the slug-gish attitude of the Wasa and the city

PAGE 2 COLUMN 6

Three progress reports on probe submitted n Udisa Islam and Kailash Sarkar

In line with a court order, three author-ities have submitted progress reports to the attorney general’s o� ce regard-ing the Narayanganj seven murders fol-lowing abduction.

The seven-member investigation team under the Law Ministry, the In-spector General of Police and elite force Rapid Action Battalion authorities handed over their reports yesterday.

These would be presented before a High Court bench tomorrow, Deputy Attorney General ASM Nazmul Haque said. Another report from the Criminal Investigation Department (CID) is yet to be prepared.

He denied disclosing contents of the reports.

PAGE 2 COLUMN 4

NARAYANGANJ SEVEN MURDER

Vehicles ply a submerged road as heavy rain inundated many roads in the capital yesterday morning. The picture was taken from Chankharpool MAHMUD HOSSAIN OPU

News2 DHAKA TRIBUNE Tuesday, June 3, 2014

Prime suspect of Ekram murder � ees PAGE 1 COLUMN 3Asked how he managed to � ee despite beefed up security, Ripon said there was no barricade at Talukpara area of Bilunia border and anyone could easily cross the border there.

There are also allegations that Ka-mal Uddin Majumdar, general secre-tary of Awami League’s Parshuram upazila unit, helped Adel escape as per a directive from Nizam.

Kamal, however, denied the claims, saying it would not have been possible for him to help Adel escape as he was not present in the area on Thursday.

Seeking anonymity, a leader from the district unit of Awami League, said the police were aware about Adel’s es-cape plan but remained silent because of an order from a top ruling party lead-er along with a large bribe.

Following the murder of Ekram, MP Nizam had been denying any involve-ment in the incident, claiming that an-yone connected to the crime must face punishment, irrespective of their polit-ical allegiance.

Asked whether Adel had escaped through the Bilunia border, Border

Guard Bangladesh’s Bilunia camp in-charge Subedar Tofazzel Hossain said they had no such information.

Paritosh Gosh, superintendent of po-lice in Feni, also told the Dhaka Tribune that they had no information on wheth-er Adel had � ed the country. Letters with pictures of suspects Adel, Jiaul Alam Mister and Ruti Sohel have been sent to immigration police and the bor-der areas for preventing the fugitives from leaving the country, he added.

The police were trying their best to arrest the criminals, Paritosh claimed. Replying to a query on whether the po-lice was involved in any irregularity, he said any personnel found guilty of such allegation would face punitive action.

Following the murder, the role of the local police was also questioned as there was reportedly a police van parked near the crime scene which failed to respond timely.

Sources also said an intelligence re-port by the Special Branch had been sent to the Police Headquarters in Dha-ka a few days before Ekram’s murder, mentioning that the Fulgazi chairman might be attacked by his rivals. Howev-

er, no preventative action was report-edly taken.

Golam Morshed, o� cer-in-charge of Feni Model police station, told the Dhaka Tribune that no police o� cial was on duty near the crime scene when the attack took place, adding that they rushed to scene as soon as they were noti� ed.

Meanwhile, a Feni court yesterday placed Jihad Chowdhury on a fresh three-day remand, after a previous eight-day remand ended. Senior Judi-cial Magistrate Khairul Amin passed the order after the investigation o� cer Abul Kalam Azad sought a seven-day remand.

Another accused in the case, Be-lal Hossain, also gave his confessional statement to the court yesterday after he was placed before it following a � ve-day remand.

On the other hand, the Fulgazi unit of Awami League staged a dawn-to-dusk hartal in the upazila, protesting the killing of Ekram and demanding the trial of his killers. Tra� c movement on the upazila’s streets remained halt-ed during the hartal. l

Three progress reports PAGE 1 COLUMN 6 Mokhlesur Rahman, additional deputy inspector general of the CID, said they might present the progress report as an a� davit before the stipulated date.

The government committee submit-ted its report to the attorney general’s o� ce mentioning that they need-ed four more weeks to complete the probe. It has taken depositions of 329 people, according to Mizanur Rahman Khan, deputy secretary of the Law Ministry and a member of the team.

The investigations were launched af-ter the bench of Justice Md Rezaul Haque and Justice Gobinda Chandra Tagore is-sued a rule when Supreme Court lawyer Shamim Sarkar drew its attention over media reports on the seven murders.

On May 15, the same bench asked the authorities concerned to submit a report to the court within tomorrow.

Rab mum on advance reportThe police and the RAB authorities have declined to disclose � ndings of their progress reports. Talking to the Dhaka Tribune, IGP Hassan Mahmood Khandker yesterday evening said:

“Since I have not gone through the re-port, I cannot make any comment now.”

RAB � rst formed a departmental committee to look into the matter as allegations were made against three of its then o� cials over their links in the incident. They formed another probe body following the High Court order.

Additional Director General (oper-ations) Col Ziaul Ahsan said he had no idea about the � ndings as he did not interfere in the investigation.

Wing Commander ATM Habibur Rahman, director of Legal and Media Wing, said in the advance report, the RAB authorities had mentioned about the people whose statements were tak-en and some other related issues.

The RAB director said they could not reach any conclusion. “We are yet to con� rm whether the three former of-� cials had any links with the killings.”

About the � ndings of the depart-mental probe body, Habibur said the four-member committee had been merged with the RAB enquiry commit-tee formed after the court order. “The task of the departmental probe body is yet to complete.” l

JS goes into its budget session todayn Kamran Reza Chowdhury

Parliament goes into a session today as Finance Minister AMA Muhith is set to place the national budget for the � scal year 2014-15 starting on July 1.

This is will be the � rst budget of the Awami League government that took o� ce after winning the January 5 gen-eral elections boycotted by the BNP and its allies.

If Muhith places the budget on June 5, he would become the � rst � nance minister in the country’s history to present the proposed budget for six consecutive terms.

For the � rst time since 1991, the BNP and Bangladesh Jamaat-e-Islami have no representation in the parliament.

According to the order of the day, the session will start at 5:00 pm, preceded by a meeting of the Business Advi-sory Committee that determines the

tenure of each session. Speaker Shirin Sharmin Chaudhury will preside over the meeting of the committee, con-sidered as the highest legislative body. Rawshan Ershad, leader of the opposi-tion, is expected to attend the meeting at 4:00 pm.

On the opening day, the House will discuss the life and works of former Ja-tiya Party MP Nasim Osman who died of heart ailment on April 30 in India, and all stipulated businesses of the leg-islature would be suspended.

He was the brother of Narayanganj MP Shamim Osman.

After placing of the national budget, MPs will hold discussion on it and the � nance minister will change some of the proposals in line with the recom-mendations of the lawmakers.

The discussion on the proposed budget being over, the House must pass the budget by June 30. l

Hasina: If alive, Zia would be sued for killing Bangabandhun Emran Hossain Shaikh

Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina yester-day claimed that late president Ziaur Rahman was involved in the Bangab-andhu killing.

“His death saved him or else we would have accused him and sued him for the murder,” the premier saidwhile addressing a meeting of the Awami League's Central WorkingCommittee at her o� cial residence Ganabhababan.

“Zia was a big conspirator, she said: "Moshtaque was Bangabandhu’s killer. As Moshtaque made Zia the army chief Zia had his involvement in the Bangan-bandu's murder.”

Bangabandhu Sheikh Mujibur Rah-man, also the father of the prime minis-ter, was assassinated by a group of dis-gruntled junior army o� cers on August 15, 1975, along with most of his family members. After the coup, Khondaker Mostaque Ahmad became his immedi-ate successor.

The prime minister also criticised Gono Forum president and noted law-yer Dr Kamal Hossain for his mocking

comment that more than half of the lawmakers in the current parliament were elected uncontested.

"He [Kamal] himself won uncon-tested in the polls of 1970 and 73 from the seats vacated by Bangabandhu… how come he now comments on it!” she wondered without referring to his name.

The person who once won elections uncontested now is vocal against win-ning uncontested, she retorted.

The PM said as the Awami League earned the country its freedom it has a commitment to the nation.

Sheikh Hasina has slammed the me-dia of the country for their anti-govern-ment stance. “You can see the practice of democracy in the talk show on pri-vate TV channels,” she quipped.

Criticising the representatives of the civil society she said they like undemo-cratic governments.

"There are many conspiracies against us; the conspiracy was made against my family. But in the face of all sorts of conspiracies we have embarked on the work of the Padma Bridge," the prime minister asserted. l

City life falters as waterlogging continues totake toll PAGE 1 COLUMN 6corporation authorities to consider the issue seriously.

Alamgir Kabir, owner of a tea stall in Shukrabad, said waterlogging became a regular feature in the entire Shukra-bad, Indira Road and Rajabazar areas during monsoon.

“We are facing this problem every year and so we want to get rid of it.”

Since the divide of city corpora-tions, drainage and street mainte-nance in many places has not been done properly as the DSCC and DNCC authorities are uncertain about which areas of the city fall under whosejurisdiction.

Admitting the poor condition of the roads and drains of the inundated are-as, DSCC Chief Engineer Zahangir Alam told the Dhaka Tribune, Shukrabad, In-dira Road and Rajabazar were not un-der their jurisdiction.

“We have nothing to do with the re-pair work in those areas,” he said.

The city corporation’s Chief Exec-utive O� cer Ansar Ali Khan said: “I suppose only Shukrabad is under the DSCC, not Indira road and the adjacent areas.”

He added that he would seek infor-mation on the demarcation and talk to the o� cials concerned.

Contacted, Dhaka Wasa Deputy Managing Director (administration) Md Ataur Rahman termed the waterlog-ging a temporarily problem.

He attributed fund crunch to the poor drainage and sewerage system in the city.

“We have already contacted di� er-ent donor agencies for their supportto develop this sector in Dhaka,” he added.

Ataur also blamed the city people for dumping of waste in the canals and drains, which prevents free � ow of wa-ter. l

The initial plan was to kill just two PAGE 1 COLUMN 5but they also picked up Chandan Sarkar and his chau� er because they had wit-nessed the incident.

Arif did not inform Tarek that they had abducted Chandan Sarker and his driver. Learning this later, Tarek and Rana got upset and rebuked Arif for his “dumb work.”

On April 27, Nazrul and his four aides, and lawyer Chandan Sarker and his driver were kidnapped after they had left the court area by two separate cars.

Six bodies, including those of Nazrul and Chandan, were found � oating on the Shitalakkhya on April 30 while the body of the other was found the next day.

On May 3, Nazrul’s father-in-law Shahidul Islam alleged that local ward councillor Nur Hossain gave Tk6 crore as bribe to the RAB men for killing Nazrul.

Three Rab o� cials – Lt Col (retd) Tareque Sayeed Mohammad, Maj (retd)

Arif Hossain and Lt Commander (retd) Masud Rana – were sent into forced re-tirement following the allegations and a media outcry. Later they were arrest-ed following a High Court rule.

One of the investigators said: “The abductees were taken in two micro-buses. Nazrul, Swapon and Tajul were in one.”

Soon, the abduction induced disa-greements among the three o� cials. Rana and Tarek blamed Arif for the “problem” that was created because � ve additional people were picked up.

Even during interrogation in police custody, the duo blamed Arif for killing seven.

“They thought, abducting and kill-ing Nazrul and Swapon would not be a problem and they would be able to tackle the situation because the two had criminal records including being accused in murder cases,” the police

o� cial said.But the abduction of lawyer Chan-

dan Sarker and his driver made the situation complex and di� cult to man-age. Even the abductors were confused whether or not to free them until the others were killed.

The investigators have also found that among the RAB o� cials, Arif was the closest to Nur Hossain. Nur had al-ways graced Arif with money and other facilities in exchange of certain servic-es and favours.

Investigators however are yet to � nd exactly how much money had been ex-changed for the murders.

“So far they [the arrested] have giv-en all confusing information about the amount. But, among the three, Arif has provided most of the information,” one of the investigators said.

Arif also told during interrogation that the abductees had been con� ned

at the o� ce of RAB 11 at Adomzi until late into that night. They were taken to the old court camp later.

“When Nazrul’s family went to the RAB o� ce to talk with the command-ing o� cer, the abductees were already con� ned to a room there. They were all unconscious,” he said.

Meanwhile, according to another source in Narayanganj police, on the night of April 26, Rana went to Nur Hossain’s Shiddhirganj o� ce wear-ing a Panjabi and held a meeting with Nur. He went there once again on the evening of April 28.

Asked whether this information was included in the police progress report submitted to the High Court, the inves-tigator said he had no idea.

“The police high ups are supposed to prepare the progress report,” he said.

Meanwhile, a Narayanganj court yesterday placed Rana on a fresh � ve-

day remand. Senior Judicial Magistrate KM Ma-

hiuddin passed the order when DB Inspector Mamunur Rashid Mondal, the investigation o� cer of the case, produced him on the expiration of his second spell of eight-day remand.

In his forwarding, the investigation o� cer told the court that evidence indi-cated that Rana had been involved in the seven murders and therefore needed to be taken into fresh a seven-day remand.

“Important information has already been gleaned during interrogation. He needs to be grilled again for further in-formation,” SI Mamunur said.

Former RAB 11 chief Tarek and Arif are now on their third-phase of � ve-day remand.

The investigation o� cer told the court earlier that they had found Tarek and Arif’s direct involvement with the abduction and murder. l

Indiscriminate waste dumping in the City Haat area in Neodapara of Rajshahi city causes a drain to over� ow and pollute the adjacent places DHAKA TRIBUNE

Fakhrul: Awami League killing its own menn Mohammad Al-Masum Molla

BNP acting secretary general Mirza Fakhrul Islam Alamgir yesterday said after � ling thousands of cases against the party activists, the ruling Awami League had now been engaged in kill-ing and abduction of its own party men.

Fakhrul alleged that the government did not have any control over anything and the incidents of Narayanganj and Feni suggested so.

“Like the 1972-75 tenure of the Awa-mi League, it has began to again to destroy everything of the country. Ac-tually the government does not have control over anything,” he said.

The BNP leader was addressing a discussion at the National Press Club

organised by the Sramik Dal to mark the party founder Ziaur Rahman’s 33rd death anniversary.

Fakhrul called upon the country-men to unite to oust the government from the o� ce as there was no alterna-tive but to remove the government and get rid of such a situation.

The party spokesperson claimed that the BNP was born in a democratic country and the party was formed fol-lowing the state rules and regulations.

Fakhrul repeated his claim that Sheikh Mujibur Rahman buried the Awami League forming a one-party parliamentary system, BAKSAL.

“Ziaur Rahman gave the Awami League a rebirth, introducing multipar-ty democracy to the country,” he said.

Awami League killed the then pres-ident Sheikh Mujibur Rahman in 1975, added the leader.

“Khandakar Mostak Ahmed, leader of the Awami League, assumed o� ce after killing him [Mujib]. He promulgat-ed military rule, and then chief justice ASM Syaem was made president. To conceal history, some Awami League lawyers labeled Zia a killer. Theycannot change history just through falsehood.”

Regarding BNP Senior Vice-Chair-man Tarique Rahman’s recent con-troversial statement on politicalhistory, Fakhrul said: “He [Tarique] talked about politics and history. If his statement is not true, give logical ex-planation.”

Earlier, at a press brie� ng at the party’s Nayapaltan headquarters, BNP Joint Secretary General Ruhul Kabir Rizvi said the “illegitimate” cabinet members of the “illegitimate govern-ment” became desperate to draw the attention of the prime minister through scolding opposition men.

He allegedly said nobody knew about the law minister’s party posi-tion in the Awami League, but afterbeing appointed as a minister, he be-came the key � gure in hurling abuses at the BNP.

Pointing his � nger at the law minis-ter, Rizvi said during the 1/11 change-over Law Minister Anisul Huq was appointed as a lawyer of the Anti-Cor-ruption Commission. l

Gold crest scam comes under ACC scannern Tribune Report

The Anti-Corruption Commission has decided to investigate the scandal over sham gold crests, which were present-ed to foreign friends for their contribu-tions to the 1971 Liberation War.

A regular meeting of the anti-cor-ruption body yesterday decided to probe the scam as the ACC is the only authority to look into the matter, which involved civil servants and public rep-resentatives allegedly misappropriat-

ing government funds by producing the crests with less gold than speci� ed, an o� cial told reporters.

The o� cial also said the ACC had al-ready scrutinised media reports on the scam.

A government probe report found that 13 senior bureaucrats, including Liberation War A� airs Secretary KH Masud Siddique, former minister AB Tajul Islam and ex-secretary Mizanur Rahman, were connected with the embezzlement, which cost the govern-

ment Tk7.04 crore. Two gold suppliers, Amicom and MS Mohsinul Hasan, were also involved in the scheme.

From 2011 to 2013, the government honoured 338 foreign individuals and organisations for their contributions to the country’s liberation. Each honoree was given a crest, which was supposed to be made of one bhori (11.66g) of gold and 30 bhori (350g) of silver.

However, a test conducted by Bang-ladesh Standards and Testing Institu-tion found that there was only about

three ana (2.2g) of gold and three bhori (35g) of brass and copper in each crest.

ACC Chairman M Bodiuzzaman told the Dhaka Tribune that the commis-sion would analyse the government probe report and try to trace the people behind the irregularity.

“As the government probe found the involvement of government high-ups in the forgery, we will inquire into this in our own way, as it is related to the im-age of the country and is a scheduled of-fense under ACC,” Bodiuzzaman said. l

Mobarak case among 5 to see verdict any day The case against Mobarak was kept on hold for about four months for the reconstitution of the tribunaln Udisa Islam

Now four cases are pending for verdict at the two International Crimes Tri-bunals following the end of the case against Mobarak Hossain alias Mobarak Ali, an alleged razakar commander from Brahmanbaria.

After the end of closing arguments, the three-member tribunal 1, led by Jus-tice Enayetur Rahim, yesterday kept the case in CAV (Curia Advisari Vult, a Lat-in legal term) which means the verdict would be given any day, drawing an end to the case that took over 13 months.

Mobarak was indicted on April 23 last year on � ve charges of crimes against humanity he had committed in Akhaura of Brahmanbaria during the 1971 Liberation War.

The case proceedings were halted for about four months due to the recon-stitution of tribunal 1 following the re-

tirement of its former chairman Justice ATM Fazle Kabir.

This is the third case which is now awaiting verdict.

The other pending cases at the tribu-nal 1 are against Jamaat-e-Islami chief Motiur Rahman Nizami and abscond-ing Faridpur BNP leader Zahid Hossain Khokon. The case against Jamaat lead-er Mir Kashem Ali is awaiting verdict at the tribunal 2.

Meanwhile, the Appellate Division of the Supreme Court is set to deliver verdict in the appeals case of death row convict Delawar Hossain Sayedee any day. The Jamaat leader was given the death sentence on February 28 last year.

Yesterday, tribunal 1 Chairman Jus-tice Enayetur accepted a prosecution plea to make some changes in charge number three. It also kept additional documents in record.

The prosecution � led the pleas on

May 27, one for correcting a “clerical mistake,” and another for accepting its explanation regarding the list of raza-kars. The defence yesterday submitted a written objection regarding the pleas.

Mizanul Islam and Tajul Islam, counsels for the accused, took part in the short hearing. On the other hand, Syed Haider Ali and Md Shahidur Rah-man stood for the prosecution.

During arguments, the defence claimed that the prosecution had failed to prove the war crimes charges

brought against the Brahmanbaria Awami League leader as the case was fabricated with false documents.

The prosecution, on the other hand, claimed that they had proved the case be-yond reasonable doubt and sought capi-tal punishment for the accused who they said had been a political opportunist.

The prosecution submitted the for-mal charges on February 25 last year and the tribunal took the charges into cognisance on March 12.

During the trial, 12 prosecution

witnesses testi� ed against Mobarak whereas the accused himself and his eldest son Asad Uddin gave depositions as defence witnesses.

The charges against Mobarak include killing of 33 unarmed civilians at Tanman-dail in Akhaura; capture of Anandamoye Kalibari temple and naming it “Razakar Manjil;” torturing one Ashuranjan to death; abduction and murder of Abdul Khaleque of Satian village; abduction and torture of Khadem Hossain Khan; and abduction of Abdul Malek of Kharampur and killing of Mohammad Siraj.

Khodeja Begum, daughter of mar-tyr Abdul Khaleque who was an Ansar member, � led a case with a Brahman-baria court in 2009. The case was later transferred to the tribunal.

War trial activist Shahriar Kabir hopes that verdicts in the pending cases would be delivered soon. “The people are eagerly waiting for the verdicts.” l

3NewsDHAKA TRIBUNE Tuesday, June 3, 2014

Victim’s brother testi� es against Abdus Subhann Udisa Islam

The ninth prosecution witness in the trial of Jamaat-e-Islami leader Maula-na Abdus Subhan said yesterday that he had witnessed the abduction and torture of his brother Jhoru Kha and neighbour Alauddin Mia during the 1971 Liberation War.

Riaz Uddin Mandal, 72, from Ish-wardi of Pabna, corroborated the tes-timony of the previous witness Ashraf Uddin Mia, 57, the son of Alauddin.

The new witness said after return-ing from the torture camp, his brother had said Subhan, Khoda Box and other razakar members had brutally tortured him and other con� ned people. Some-times they charged with bayonets.

In the beginning of his deposition at the tribunal 2, Riaz said: “On a day in the middle of Baishakh [� rst month of Bangla calendar], Subhan and his co-horts came to our place and enquired about my brother. Some Biharis and

members of the Pakistani Army were with him.” The witness said Subhan had ordered them to loot the house since they had failed to capture Jhoru Kha and Alauddin. They also set the house on � re.

He continued: “On the � rst day of Jaishthya [second month of Bangla calendar], Subhan and some Pakistani Army men came to Arunkhola and sur-rounded a tea stall in the market place. They captured my brother and Alaud-din Mia from there and took them to the Ishwardi government rest house.”

After the incident, the family had

contacted razakar Khoda Box for their release. “Khoda Box told us to request Subhan as he was their leader.” When they met Subhan, he con� rmed that the Pakistani Army would free them, and they were released.

Quoting his brother, the witness said he had been tortured on Subhan’s orders. After his deposition, the de-fence questioned the witness and the tribunal adjourned the trial until today, leaving it incomplete.

Meanwhile, the tribunal 1 asked the IGP, the SP of Pirojpur and the OC of Mothbaria police yesterday about the progress on the arrest warrant issued against war crimes suspect engineer Abdul Jabbar.

On May 12, the tribunal issued the or-der against Jabbar, a former Jatiya Party lawmaker, after accepting the � ve for-mal charges placed by the prosecution.

Yesterday, the tribunal asked the au-thorities concerned to place report on further progress on June 12. l

ACC sues ex-state minister’s APSn Tribune Report

The Anti-Corruption Commission yes-terday � led a case against a former aide to ex-state minister for religious a� airs M Shahjahan Miah for allegedly amass-ing illegal wealth worth over Tk1crore.

ACC deputy director KM Mejbah Uddin � led the case with Ramna po-lice station after an inquiry found that ex-assistant personal secretary (APS) Soumendra Lal Chandra Shoilen earned huge sums of money through irregular means during his four years of service with the former state minister.

According to the case statement, in addition to his legal earnings, the ACC found Soumendra made an extra Tk11,185,639 illegally during his service period from 2009 to 2013.

The statement says the former APS used to earn Tk2.39lakh annually from his salary and other bene� ts, which should come to a total of Tk11.76lakh in four years. However, the inquiry revealed that Shoilen made around Tk1.18crore over four years, leading investigators to suspect that he earned the money illegally.

After analysing Soumendra’s income tax statement for 2013-14, the ACC found that his net income was around Tk31lakh, while he had deposits with several banks, including over Tk64lakh at Sonali Bank, over Tk3lakh at Mercantile Bank and over Tk4lakh at Premier Bank.

Soumendra, who is also the o� ce secretary of the ruling party’s Patuakh-ali unit, has built a � ve-storey building in the town, while his wife owns several � ats in Dhaka, the case statement says.

The ACC initially began investigat-

ing the former APS for allegedly taking Tk50crore in bribes for issuing licences to nearly 400 Hajj and umrah agents.

When Soumendra worked for Shah-jahan Miah, the religious a� airs min-istry approved at least 400 licences for several new companies, allegedly in exchange for hefty kickbacks. The then APS reportedly was the key player in the bribery scam. There are also alle-gations that the former APS smuggled huge amounts of money to India using his mother and siblings. l

Two more testify in Zubair murder casen Md Sanaul Islam Tipu

Two prosecution witnesses testi� ed yesterday in the Jahangirnagar Uni-versity student Zubair Ahmed murder case, in which 13 Bangladesh Chhatra League activists are accused for their direct involvement in the incident.

Dhaka’s Speedy Trial Tribunal 4 Judge ABM Nizamul Haque recorded their depositions and � xed June 8 for further witnesses. The judge did not hear the other witness, Kamrul Hasan, as he was feeling ill.

Enam Medical College Hospital phy-sician Dr Sohel Rana, the 20th witness, said the victim had been brought to the hospital in Savar by two persons on January 8, 2012. At that time he was working in the emergency department.

“One of them provided me with a telephone number and requested that I talk to a friend of the victim. I gave him � rst aid and transferred him to the ICU. Later the victim was sent to Unit-ed Hospital for proper treatment,” Rana said.

So far, the court has recorded depo-sitions of 21 out of 37 witnesses in the sensational case.

Earlier, several prosecution witness-es did not appear at the court on time, fearing attacks by the accused – nine of whom are now out on bail while the others are absconding.

SM Ra� qul Islam, public prosecutor of the tribunal, said four of the accused � ed the courtroom in front of lawyers and police soon after their bails had been cancelled. He said those accused were frequently threatening the wit-nesses with dire consequences.

Zubair Ahmed, 23, an � nal year hon-ours student of the English department was severely beaten and hacked on the campus on January 8 by over 40 Chhatra League activists. He died at United Hos-pital the following day. A former Chhatra League activist, Zubair was reportedly at-tacked by his rivals in the Chhatra League.

Following an investigation, the university authorities found the 13 ac-cused responsible for the killing and expelled them for di� erent terms. l

Court Accused Date of CAV

Tribunal 1 Motiur Rahman Nizami March 24, 2014

Zahid Hossain Khokon April 17, 2014

Mobarak Hossain June 2, 2014

Tribunal 2 Mir Kashem Ali May 4, 2014

Apex court Delawar Hossain Sayedee April 16, 2014

RAB nabs Tekerhat double murder ‘mastermind’n Kailash Sarkar

Rapid Action Battalion yesterday claimed to have arrested the master-mind behind the double murder that took place on Saturday night at Teker-hat in Rajoir upazila, Madaripur.

Wing Commander ATM Habibur Rahman, director of RAB’s legal and media wing, said RAB 2 personnel ar-rested Khandaker Saifur Rahman, alias Shaheen, 45, from a residential hotel in the capital’s Mohakhali area.

RAB o� cials claimed Shaheen ad-mitted to being involved in the mur-ders, saying that he had planned to kill Bashar due to personal enmity.

The RAB o� cial, quoted Shaheen saying: “He hired a gang of killers pay-ing Tk3 lakh to kill Bashar.”

Shaheen, the general secretary of Awa-mi League Bollovdi union, Faridpur was charged as the main accused in the case. l

Police intercept a Gonojagoron Moncho procession yesterday which was heading towards the Law Ministry demanding the withdrawal of the law minister’s comment on the trial of Jamaat-e-Islami as an organisation MAHMUD HOSSAIN OPU

Imran: Govt trying to save Jamaat n DU Correspondent

Gonojagoron moncho spokesman Im-ran H Sarker said the government is trying to save Jamaat-e-Islami and its student wing Islami Chhatra Shibir.

“The ambiguous statement involv-ing Jamaat-Shibir by the high-ups of the government proves that it is trying to shun the Jamaat trial,” Imran said, while staging a demonstration in Doyel Chattar area in the capital.

He urged to the law minister to withdraw his remarks about the Jamaat trial.

Earlier, police intercepted a proces-sion of the moncho in the area while it was heading towards the Ministry of Law and scu� e ensued there, leaving three activists hurt who were taken to DMCH.

Later, the activists continued demonstrating, from where they de-clared of stage a nationwide demon-stration programme on June 6.

Shahbagh police station OC Shirajul Islam said: “We have stopped the pro-cession as per direction from the higher authorities.” l

On May 12, the tribunal issued the order against Jabbar, a former Jatiya Party lawmaker, after accepting the � ve formal charges

4 NewsDHAKA TRIBUNE Tuesday, June 3, 2014

Jatiya Sangsad body recommends revitalising jute sectorn Kamran Reza Chowdhury

The highest advisory body for the im-provement of the jute sector could not hold a single meeting since 2012, con-tradicting an electoral pledge by the ruling Awami League to promote the golden � bre, which was once the coun-try’s main export item.

While discussing development ini-tiatives of the present government re-garding the sector, a 10-member par-liamentary standing committee on the textile and jute ministry recommended

yesterday that the National Jute Sector Coordination Committee, headed by the jute minister, should hold a meet-ing immediately.

“It is unfortunate that the commit-tee headed by the minister has not met a single time since 2012. It should meet immediately for policy guidelines from all stakeholders,” Saber Hossain Chow-dhury, chairman of the parliamentary committee, told the Dhaka Tribune af-ter the meeting.

Former jute secretary AshrafulMo-

qbulsaid the 38-member national co-ordination committee is comprised of representatives from both the govern-ment and private sector. The commit-tee once played an important role in formulating guidelines for the devel-opment of the sector.

The standing committee also dis-cussed the disbursement of govern-ment declared incentives for jute ex-ports. It also noted that the government owed Tk650 crore to the state-run Ban-gladesh Jute Mills Corporation (BJMC) and the private sector for jute exports.

“The total pending incentives for jute exports stand at Tk650 crore. The BJMC’s share is Tk150 crore, while the private sector gets the rest,” Saber Hos-sain said, adding that his committee had recommended immediate distri-bution of the amount.

In 2013, former jute minister Ab-dul Latif Siddiqui told parliament that state-owned jute mills had run out of funds, and could not buy raw materials or pay wages.

The standing committee also backed the ministry’s proposal for modernis-ing the jute mills, which would require over Tk2,000 crore.

“Most of the jute mills were set up in 1960s, and those are too old. So, BMRE (overhaul) of the mills would increase production by at least 50 percent, ulti-mately bene� tting the sector,” Saber said.

Committee members Mirza Azam, Enamur Rahman and Sabina Akter Tuhin also attended the meeting, held at the parliament building. l

Five killed in road accidentsn Our Correspondent,

Tangail

Five people, including a child, were killed in separate road accidents in Tangail Sa-dar upazila, Ghatail upazila, Madhupur upazila and Ba-sail upazila yesterday.

Police con� rmed the identities of four of the vic-tims, Ra� qul Islam, 35, Kud-dus Ali, 40, Mozibur Rah-man, 45, and Sami, 10.

The � fth victim was an unidenti� ed 22-year-old woman.

Anwar Hossain, sub-inspector of Tangail Model police station, said: “Ra� q was killed around noon on the Dhaka- Tangail highway near Biswas Betka area. He was run over by a bus when he fell down from his motorcycle after colliding with a battery-run auto-rickshaw.”

Kuddus was hit by a bus in Porabai area under Gha-tail upazila around 10:15am, and died instantly, said Sub-Inspector Mizan of Gha-tail police station.

Mozib, an auto-rickshaw driver, was killed when a speeding truck hit his vehi-cle in Madhupur Thana Mor area around 11am, leaving him injured. He later died on his way to Madhupur Upazila Health Complex, said Mozibor Rahman, OC of Madhupur police station.

Meanwhile, the unidenti-� ed woman and Sami were when a Sirajganj-bound bus fell into a ditch beside the Dhaka-Tangail highway in Patkhaguri area around 4pm. Sami died on the spot, and the woman, along with 19 others, were injured. They were taken to Tangail General Hospital, where she died at 5:15pm. l

IPH to introduce food safety coursesn Moniruzzaman Uzzal

With food adulteration becoming a ma-jor health concern across the country, the Institute of Public Health (IPH) is plan-ning to introduce graduate and postgrad-uate courses that will enable students to learn about health technology and be better prepared to tackle the crisis.

The Health Ministry has already giv-en permission to the IPH for introduc-ing BSc courses for the disciplines of health technology (laboratory science) and health technology (food safety) along with courses for the Master’s of Public Health (MPH) degree.

IPH sources said the institute will ini-tially start by admitting 30 students next

January under the four-year undergrad-uate programme in health technology (laboratory science). The other two pro-grammes will be introduced later.

The IPH has submitted a request to the Health Ministry for creating over 100 posts for teachers and other sta� s; budget allocation will also soon be sought from the ministry.

IPH Director Dr Subimal Sinha Choudhury said the initiative to intro-duce the health courses had been taken a couple of years ago.

In November 2012, the ministry gave permission to the IPH for opening three programmes, while in February this year, the Dhaka University gave approv-al for starting classes for the laboratory

science courses. The DU authority also made recommendations including sug-gesting the course curriculum for the food safety discipline before giving ap-proval for the other BSc programme.

Abdul Hannan, a former director of the IPH, had earlier told the Dhaka Tri-bune that the IPH should be more de-termined to introduce the BSc in food safety programme as soon as possible because food adulteration has become a serious health concern.

The IPH has also sought the a� lia-tion of BSMMU to introduce a one-year MPH programme; but BSSMU’s direc-tor of college inspection, Dr Abu Sha� Ahmed Amin, said the process would take more time. l

Free movement of human hauliers demanded n Our Correspondent,

Chapainawabganj

Sramik Oikko Committee held a protest rally yesterday at Collector Chattar in Chapainawabganj demanding unre-stricted movement of human hauliers, which are locally known as Nasi-man-Kariman.

They also submitted a memoran-dum to the deputy commissioner and demanded that such impounded vehi-cles be released.

Police intercepted the rally in dif-ferent areas, including Fire Brigade intersection, Police Line intersection and Nayagala intersection, prompting altercations between the rally partici-pants and them.

Earlier in the day, around 10:30am, drivers and conductors belonging to the committee gathered at Dairapur truck terminal and headed for the city but were obstructed by police at a number of points. In face of their persistence, law enforcers were com-pelled to gather them at CollectorChattar.

Thousands of human haulier work-ers gathered there by 11:30am and sub-mitted a memorandum to the deputy commissioner after the rally.

The committee’s president Ba-kul Hossain, general secretary Abdul Khaleq and several others addressed the rally and warned that stern steps would be taken if their demands were not met.

Chapainawabganj Deputy Commis-sioner Sardar Sarafat Ali said the local human hauliers would not be allowed to move on highways, adding that the vehicles were permitted to run in rural areas.

Bakul said the next programme would be announced after the or-ganisation made a decision unanim-ously. l

Ershad hurt at formalin speechn Manik Miazee

Jatiya Party Chairman Ershad said yesterday he was hurt at the recent political comments making fun of formalin, a harmful chemical widely being laced with food in the country.

Earlier on Wednesday, BNP Chair-person Khaleda Zia said Awami League had gone rotten and forma-

lin is a must to keep it alive. Later on Saturday, Prime Minis-

ter and Awami League chief Sheikh Hasina said her party was trying to keep BNP alive with formalin while the next day, BNP acting Secretary General Mirza Fakhrul Islam Alamgir termed the present government as risky as formalin.

“I feel hurt when people crack

jokes about formalin. The top lead-ers are making fun of the formalin that is pushing us towards death,” Ershad said yesterday.

He was speaking at the Jatiyo Prakton Soinik Party representative convention held at his Bannani of-� ce in Dhaka city.

“They actually do not have the honest will to stop its use,” he said,

adding: “I will stop its use within seven days when I come to power.”

The former military dictator questioned the existence of democ-racy and civilisation people expect in the country.

“People talk about democracy and civilisation but where are they [democracy and civilisation] now? he said. l

Two locals stand in front of a memorial built in memory of those who lost their lives in a deadly � re in Old Dhaka’s Nimtoli. Today is the � fth anniversary of the incident, which claimed the lives of over a hundred people NASHIRUL ISLAM

Government of the People’s Republic of BangladeshOffi ce of the Chief Engineer/West

Bangladesh RailwayRajshahi.

Invitation for Tenders1 Ministry/Division Ministry of Railway.2 Agency Bangladesh Railway.3 Procuring Entity Name Chief Engineer (West), Bangladesh Railway, Rajshahi.4 Procuring Entity Code Not used at present.5 Procuring Entity District Rajshahi.6 Invitation for Procurement of 20Nos. Steel Almirah for Godown of Chief

Engineer/West Offi ces.7 Invitation Ref. No 54.01.8100.155.04.079.148 Date 01-06-2014

KEY INFORMATION9 Procurement Method Open Tender Method (NCT)

FUNDING INFORMATION10 Budget & Source of Funds Revenue (GoB)

PARTICULAR INFORMATION11 Tender Publication Date 08-06-2014.12 Tender last Selling Date 25-06-2014 at 13.00 Hrs.13 Tender Closing Date & Time Date: 26-06-2014 Time: 12.00 hrs.14 Tender Opening Date & Time Date: 26-06-2014 Time: 12.30 hrs.15 Name & Address of Offi ce(s)

-Selling Tender Document (Principal) Chief Engineer/West, Bangladesh Railway, Rajshahi.-Selling Tender Document (Others)-Receiving Tender Document Chief Engineer/West, Bangladesh Railway, Rajshahi.-Opening Tender Document Chief Engineer/West, Bangladesh Railway, Rajshahi.

INFORMATION FOR TENDER16 Eligibility of Tender As Stated in the tender document.17 Time for completion of works 60 (Sixty) days.18 Price of Tender Document Tk. 500/- (Five Hundred Only).19 Amount of Tender Security Tk. 15,000/- (Fifteen thousand) only. Through Bank Draft or Pay

Order in favour of FA&CAO/West, Bangladesh Railway, Rajshahi.PROCURING ENTITY DETAILS20 Name of Offi cial Inviting Tender Md. Mahbubul Haque Bakshi.21 Designation of Offi cial Inviting Tender Chief Engineer(West), Bangladesh Railway, Rajshahi.22 Address of Offi cial Inviting Bangladesh Railway, Rajshahi.23 Contact details of Offi cial Inviting Tender Tel: 0721-761984, Fax: 0721-76198424 The procuring entity reserves the right to accept or reject all tenders

Md. Mahbubul Haque Bakshi Chief Engineer/WestRPRD No-3783, Date: 02/06/2014 Bangladesh RailwayGC- 73/14 (7×3) Rajshahi.

Most of the jute mills were set up in 1960s. So, BMRE (overhaul)of the mills would increase productionby at least 50%

WEATHER

5NewsDHAKA TRIBUNE Tuesday, June 3, 2014

PRAYER TIMES Fajar 3:45am Sunrise 5:10am Zohr 11:57am Asr 3:16pm Magrib 6:43pm Esha 8:09pm

Source: IslamicFinder.org

Source: Accuweather/UNB

D H A K ATODAY TOMORROW

SUN SETS 6:43PM SUN RISES 5:11AM

YESTERDAY’S HIGH AND LOW35.0ºC 24.0ºC

Sayedpur Khepupara

TUESDAY, JUNE 3

F O R E C A S T F O R T O D A YDhaka 35 28Chittagong 32 27Rajshahi 37 28Rangpur 36 26Khulna 34 26Barisal 32 26Sylhet 35 24Cox’s Bazar 32 27

HEAVY RAINS

HATIRJHEEL COMPENSATORY FLATS

A� ected people to wait 1 more yearn Manik Miazee

The people, who lost their lands during the construction of the Hatirjheel-Be-gunbari project, have to wait another year for compensation as the Rajdhani Unnayan Kartripakkha (Rajuk) cannot hand the � ats over to them before June 2015 because of confusion over the actual number of evicted people and some internal problems.

Rajuk is still looking for people who were genuinely a� ected when theplace was given a facelift and before the full completion of the project, thehandover of the � ats will not bepossible, for at least another year, o� -cials said.

Earlier, the government decided to compensate the land owners with � ats as part of the project within December 2014.

“We cannot complete the project by the end of the year because of some internal problems, one of which is the slow pace of construction,” said Md

Arefur Rahman, director of the Hatir-jheel-Begunbari project.

He said Rajuk had published notices in national dailies inviting applications from real victims who lost their lands.

“A total of 201 applications were received and all of them claimed com-pensation. We will verify the applica-tions and documents and will begin delivering the � ats,” he added.

Arefur said they are hopeful about completing the project by June next year.

“Construction of a multi-storeyed building is � nished and that of another one is underway,” he said, adding that the completed structure has yet to get utility connections, which is why more time is needed for the handover.

According to the Rajuk plan, it will construct two 16-storeyed buildings with 56 � ats measuring 850 square feet each.

The 56 � ats will be distributed among the people who lost their lands and the remaining 56 will be sold to the general people.

“The money generated from the selling of the � ats will be used for com-pensating other victims, if any,” o� -cials said.

Construction of the 300-acre Hatir-jheel-Begunbari project began back in 2004 and the Executive Committee of National Economic Council approved it in 2008.

Engineering Construction Battalion of the Bangladesh Army is implement-ing the project under the supervision of the Ministry of Housing and Public Works and Rajuk. l

USTC protestors block road again, no solution yetn CU Correspondent

The teachers, students, o� cials and employees of University of Science and Technology Chittagong (USTC) again observed a blocked of Jakir Hos-sain road in the port city yesterday and staged a protest rally.

The protestors started the strike demanding the implementation of ser-vice rules, and yesterday was the 13th day of the protest.

Campus sources said the demon-strators brought out a procession on campus of the university in the morn-ing and then held a rally in front of Mowlana Bhasani auditorium.

Later, the USTC’s Engineering and Technology Faculty students put a barricade on the road around 11am de-manding membership of Institute of Engineering of Bangladesh (IEB), stop-ping the tra� c movement for half an hour, said Mohammed Shah Alam, SI of Khulshi police station.

Despite having passed 13 days of the deadlock, Janasheba Foundation,

the trustee board, remained silent over solving this issue, leaving the future of around 3000 students hanging in balance though it called an emergency syndicate meeting in Dhaka O� ce on Friday, which ended without a resolu-tion.

On the other hand, the university authorities have stopped the pay of the sta� s following the agitation, said Anwarul Islam Bappy, member sec-retary of USTC Teachers-Doctors and O� cials-Employees Coordination Par-ishad.

“Trustee Board formed a pay commission to consider the sta� s’ demands and it will submit a recommendation letter in this regard, said USTC vice chancellor Dr M Rezaul Karim.

Stopping all types of academic ac-tivities and administrative tasks, the Teachers-Doctors and O� cials-Em-ployees of USTC have been observing their protest for four hours since May 18 demanding the implementation of service rules. l

KARNAPHULI RIVER DREDGING

Action to be taken against contractorn Tushar Hayat, Chittagong

Parliamentary Standing Committee Chair-man on the Shipping Ministry Ra� qul Islam said yesterday that they would recommend legal measures against the contractor of the capital dredging of the Karnaphuli River project for not completing their task as per the treaty.

“The contractor � rm, Malaysian Marine and Dredging Corporation, should be black listed as they have not completed the work as per the treaty,” he said while visiting the headway of the project at Sadarghat and Chaktai He also said they would go through the documents to � nd out whether the Chittagong Port Authorities (CPA) had

paid any extra amount to the company, adding that if so, measures would be taken to get back the extra money.

The standing committee chairman also said they would take necessary measures to complete the dredging work, appointing a new contractor.

CPA Chairman Rear Admiral Ni-zamuddin said only 35%-40% of the dredging work had been completed under the project. However, 99% of jet-ty construction and 95% of bank pro-tection embankment work had been completed, he added.

The project, worth Tk229 crore, was initiated on May 15, 2011. Though the contractor � rm was scheduled to � nish the project by January 2013. l

BU students postpone protest n Our Correspondent, Barisal

Students at Barisal University post-poned their agitation programme to press home their six-point demand yesterday, following a meeting with the road transport owners and the uni-versity authorities.

H M Zahirul Islam, convener of the university’s Shadharon Chhatra Parishad, said the programme waspostponed as they reached an agree-ment with the bus owners and re-ceived assurances from the university authorities.

The demonstration was planned in protest of a two-hour clash that took place between the university students and road transport workers in front of the new, under-construc-tion campus of the university t h at l e f t 1 0 i n j u r e d a n d t h r e e ve h i -c l e s d a m a ge d .

The agitated students boycotted classes and exams and placed a six-point demand on Saturday, threaten-ing to launch a tougher movement if the demands were not met by Monday evening.

The meeting was held at the

vice-chancellor’s o� ce yesterday af-ternoon.

The six-point demand includes punishment of the transport workers and leaders who attacked students on Thursday, immediate construction of dormitories and boundary walls, construction of a passenger shed and speed breaker in front of the campus, the fixing of the session fees includ-ing all other charges at Tk3,000 for each student, the announcement of the date for the university’s student union elections, and the withdrawal of the resignation letters submitted by five assistant proctors.

The meeting was attended by Vice-Chancellor Professor Md Harunor Rashid Khan, Registrar Monirul Islam, President of Teachers’ Association Professor Sha� ul Alam, Secretary of Teachers’ Association Professor Pro-fessor Tanvir Qaiser, leaders of the agitating students HM Zahirul Islam, Ferozul Islam, Imran Hossain Nantu and Tou� que Omar, and Secretary and Organising Secretary of Barisal Bus Owners’ Association Kawsar Hossain and Md Naim, respectively.

The bus owners’ association leaders

said they had consented to provide a special shuttle bus service from the city to the university campus, intro-duce concessions on the ticket price for the students on all the routes to the campus upon showing their ID cards, and stopping at the campus entrance.

The vice-chancellor said the as-sistant proctors were still on duty as their resignation had not been ac-cepted.

Also, the university authority had decided to � x the session fees at Tk3,000 per student, adding Tk500 as transportation fees, he said.

Construction of the speed breaker and passenger shed was under way, and the boundary walls would be built later, he added.

Zahirul Islam, one of the student leaders, said the authority also agreed to allow the formation of a student body after the inauguration of the dor-mitories and a full-� edged campus.

However the student leaders also cautioned that if the agreed deci-sions were not implemented properly, they would launch the agitation pro-gramme. l

Ship-breaking accident kills one n Tushar Hayat, Chittagong

A worker was killed late in the day on Sunday in an accident at a ship-break-ing yard in Kadam Rasul area of Chit-tagong’s Sitakund upazila.

The deceased Mohammed Mohiud-din, 22, was from Moheshkhali upazi-la in Cox’s Bazar, and was a worker of ship-breaking yard SH Enterprise.

Yard owner Kamal Uddin said Mo-hiuddin fell from the scrap vessel, MV Recher Express, when he was returning after doing some cutting work. He add-ed that the injured worker was rushed to the Sergiscope Hospital, where the on-duty doctors pronounced him dead around 11pm.

Aminul Islam, inspector at Sita-kund police station, said the deceased worker was not wearing a security suit during the accident, adding that they were investigating further into the in-cident.

Earlier on April 3, three workers were killed in an accident at Are� n En-terprise, a sister concern of SH Enter-prise, while another worker was killed in an accident at a ship-breaking yard in Jahanarabad area on May 14 last year. l

Two men shot during attempted muggingn Our Correspondent, Savar

Some unidenti� ed criminals shot and injured two men during an attempted mugging yesterday near the Ashulia police station in Savar.

Retired army personnel Abdur Raz-zak, 60, was returning to his home in Ashulia’s Gazirchot area, when four young men riding on two motorbikes stopped him near the Ashulia police station and tried to snatch around Tk5.5

lakh that Razzak was carrying with him. During the scu� e, the culprits shot Razzak in his leg, said witnesses and the victim’s family members.

When a bystander, 45-year-old busi-nessman Yunus Miah, came forward to rescue Razzak, the muggers also shot him in the head before � eeing the scene without being able to take the money with them.

Razzak is now receiving treatment at Savar Combined Military Hospital

for the bullet wound to his leg, while Yunus Miah has been kept at the inten-sive care unit of Enam Medical College Hospital.

Dr Shaikat, the on-duty doctor at Enam Medical College Hospital, said Yunus was in a critical condition and his health might deteriorate at any time.

Ashulia’s Assistant Superintendent of Police Russel Sheikh said the police have inspected the scene, but added that no arrest has been made yet. l

RMG workers continue work abstentionn Our Correspondent, Savar

Workers of a garment factory in Ashu-lia abstained from work for the second day running yesterday, protesting the dismissal of � ve of their colleagues.

Authorities of a sweater company named Helicon Limited, located in-side the Dhaka Export Processing Zone (DEPZ), reportedly laid o� � ve of its workers on Saturday. Hearing the news on the following day, the workers of the factory started demonstrating instead of starting their work.

They staged protests on Sunday claim-ing that their colleagues have been dis-missed without any valid reason. The factory authorities were later forced to declare a holiday to calm the situation.

The agitated workers continued the demonstrations yesterday, demanding a stop to unnecessary job cuts, harassment against workers, and intimidation by local goons. They carried on the protests until Helicon authorities declared a holiday again at 1:30pm.

When asked about the demonstra-tions, Director of Ashulia Industrial Police Mosta� zur Rahman said the fac-tory had to shut down because of the ongoing protests by the workers.

Additional police personnel have been deployed in the area to prevent any untoward incident, he added. l

Six muggers held in Ctgn FM Mizanur Rahaman, Chittagong

Police arrested six alleged muggers in Muradpur area of Chittagong city ear-ly yesterday and seized three sharp weapons from their possession.

The detained are Md Ismail, 33, Md Jafar, 18, Md Haidar Ali, 19, Md Sumon, 22, Md Shahid, 18 and Md Belal, 18, said police.

Sub-Inspector Kamruzzaman of Panchlish police station said the

muggers stole valuables from Kamal Hossain after hacking him with sharp weapons near N Mohammed Conven-tion Centre in Muradpur area around 2:30am, leaving him critically injured.

Hearing the hue and cry, locals caught the muggers and informed the police. Police then recovered three machetes from their possession, the SI added.

Kamal was sent to Chittagong Med-ical College Hospital and a case was � led in this regard. l

The photo taken from Power house area of Tejgaon shows a 16-storey incomplete building meant for those a� ected by the Hatirjheel-Begunbari Project DHAKA TRIBUNE

The Power Development Board, Rajshahi conducts a drive against illegal gas connection in Sagorpara area yesterday DHAKA TRIBUNE

The factory authorities were later forced to declare a holiday to calm the situation

‘A total of 201 applications were received and all of them claimed compensation. We will verify the applications and documents and will begin delivering the � ats’

6 NationDHAKA TRIBUNE Tuesday, June 3, 2014

Thakurgaon Diabetic Hospital employees go on inde� nite striken Our Correspondent,

Thakurgaon

Being unable to get the hos-pital authority to pay their arrears by staging a three-day work abstention programme, doctors, nurses and other employees of Thakurgaon Swasthoseba Hospital (Dia-betic Hospital) called an in-de� nite strike there yesterday.

In the afternoon yester-day, Dr Nur Alam Mandal, spokesperson for the em-ployees of the hospital, con-� rmed the strike, which was supposed to start from today.

Due to the work absten-tion, the hospital services had virtually stopped and the patients in the district as well as nearby Panchagarh have been su� ering massively.

Sources said there is a to-

tal of 126 sta� members at the hospital, and they have been unpaid for last nine months. On Thursday, the employees went on a three-day work abstention, demanding their arrears and allowances.

When contacted, the agi-tating sta� blamed the au-thorities concerned for the deadlock, saying they were forced to call the strike as the situation had � nally become unbearable.

Ekramul Hoque Swapan, executive director of the hos-pital, said he was trying his best to solve the crisis by con-tacting the higher authorities.

Mukes Biswas, Thakur-gaon Deputy Commissioner, said the ongoing impasse was an internal hospital mat-ter that the authorities would solve. l

UNO o� ce vandalised over snap poll deferraln Our Correspondent,

Sirajganj

Agitated locals vandalised the o� ces of the Chouhali upazila nirbahi o� cer (UNO) and the election o� cer over the sudden deferral of the election for the upazila’s Khas Pukuria Union Pari-shad in Sirajganj yesterday.

Witnesses said the election for the Uniona Parishad had been deferred for 12 years due to a court ruling on it, but the Election Commission had re-cently announced the sched-ule for holding the election.

As per the schedule, the election was to be held on Monday. All the prepara-tions were in place, but the locals later learned that the election had been post-

poned again, they said. En-raged at the deferral, early in the morning yesterday, the locals brought out a proces-sion and reached the upazila town. They then vandalised the o� ces of the upazila nir-bahi o� cer and election of-� cer, said the witnesses.

Chouhali Upazila Nirbahi O� cer Mohammad Abdul-lah said they had all the preparations in place for the elections to be held. “But we had to defer it upon a High Court order at 11pm (Sun-day),” he explained.

The deferral order fol-lowed a petition � led by cur-rent Union Parishad Chair-man Mizanur Rahman, who was also the BNP-backed candidate in the postponed election. l

Two children die in roof collapsen Our Correspondent,

Gaibandha

Two children died on Sunday when an under-construction mosque roof collapsed on them in Gaibandha Sadar upazila.

The victims were Kazi Safalya, 7, the son of Kazi Khaled Mahmud Biplob of the upazila’s Kazibari village and Bishal, 6, the son of Ab-dul Mannan of Gobindaganj upazila’s Mohimaganj village.

Four other children were also injured in the incident.

They were treated at local hos-pitals. Their identities could not be known immediately.

Kholahati Union Pari-shad Chairman Kazi Ibrahim Khalil Ulfat said the six chil-dren were playing inside the under-construction mosque.

Four of them then climbed onto the roof. As soon as they got on the roof, the roof col-lapsed and fell, along with them, on top of Safalya and Bishal, he said. Bishal died on the spot and Safalya died while receiving treatment at Rangpur Medical College Hospital. l

One shot, 11 held after shootout in Habiganjn Our Correspondent,

Habiganj

A robber was shot in a gun-� ght between police and robbers at Aushkandi in Na-biganj upazila of Habiganj on Sunday night.

Lutfur Rahman, 40, re-ceived bullet injuries during the shootout that took place around 11:30pm. Police also detained 11 robbers, and seized four pipe guns and a microbus.

A 28-member police team chased the robbers, who are all from Habiganj, as the lat-

ter were attempting to com-mit a robbery in Goalabazar, Sylhet. Chased by law en-forcers, the robbers headed for Habiganj in a microbus and the police team, assisted by Nabiganj police, collared 11 of them from Aushkandi CNG station area. Before be-ing nabbed, the robbers � red 8-10 rounds at police who responded with six rounds. Lutfur received bullet inju-ries during the � ght and four policemen were also injured.

The four were admitted to Moulvibazar Sadar Adhunik Hospital. l

Leaders and activists of Fulgazi upazila unit stage demonstration in the district town demanding arrest of the killers of Ekramul Haque FOCUS BANGLA

n Jeffrey D Sachs

Jesus’ teachings o� er good news for the righteous, whether they are the poor and marginalised or the rich who are generous with their bounty.

All can � nd a place in the kingdom. Yet there is little comfort for those who expect that their wealth alone will save them. The story of Lazarus and the rich man is a reminder of the fate of the wealthy who ignore the poor in their midst (Lk 16:19-31).

So we should not be surprised by the highly divergent reactions to Pope Francis’ apostolic exhortation, “The Joy of the Gospel.” On the one hand, people across the globe were imme-diately and powerfully drawn to the pope’s message of hope and social jus-

tice. They were stirred by his critique of “the dictatorship of an impersonal economy lacking a truly human pur-pose,” and they were uplifted by his call for solidarity with the poor.

Yet in the United States, a number of the famously rich, and commen-tators who routinely speak for them, were clearly incensed. “Marxist,” cried a few, and the charge echoed. The pope is “confused,” declared others. And still others tried to de� ect the pope’s message by claiming that it was really directed to his own homeland, Argentina, rather than the United States. At least one wealthy individual threatened to withhold a donation for the renovation of St Patrick’s Cathe-dral in New York.

Those who presumed to read into the pope’s words a speci� c economic plan were mistaken. Pope Francis, like Jesus, o� ered no such plan. “This exhortation is not a social document,” writes the pope. Jesus overturned the tables of the money changers not to im-plement a � rst-century Glass-Steagall Act, but rather to make a moral point — that the house of divine justice had become a den of thieves. Pope Francis carries Jesus’ message into the heart of today’s capitalism. He reminds us that we need a moral framework for our 21st-century economy.

That message is fundamentally subversive of prevailing attitudes in the corridors of American power, whether on Wall Street or in Washington. And it is crucial for exactly that reason. Far too many of the rich and powerful in the United States are in thrall to an economic ideology that places property rights over human dignity, even human survival. Too many believe that morali-ty is the result of the marketplace.

That is no exaggeration. The doc-trine of libertarianism, for example, as expounded by Ayn Rand and her fol-lowers, including Alan Greenspan, for-mer chairman of the Federal Reserve, is based on the idea that economic justice is de� ned by the “liberty” of the marketplace. Liberty in this vision is the freedom to buy, sell and protect one’s property. Neither government, nor regulation, nor even moral self-restraint, should interfere. Taxes, for example, are viewed as a form of servitude to the state, even when the tax revenues are destined to feed the poor, sustain the unemployed, provide health to the indigent and protect the environment for all.

The church and property rights

The church has rightly and consist-ently rejected the idea that private property rights are sacrosanct. Since the modern church � rst took up the economic question more than a century ago, notably in Pope Leo XIII’s “Rerum Novarum” (1891) during the � rst wave of industrialisation (and the robber-baron era), it has favoured

a market economy, yet one in which the rights to private property are embedded in a moral framework. Morality and human dignity must be paramount; property rights should be responsive to the higher calling of justice.

Pope Leo XIII put it this way: “It is lawful,” says St Thomas Aquinas, “for a man to hold private property; and it is also necessary for the carrying on of human existence.” But if the question be asked: How must one’s possessions be used? – the church replies without hesitation in the words of the same holy doctor: “Man should not consider his material possessions as his own, but as common to all, so as to share them without hesitation when others are in need ...

To sum up, then, what has been said: Whoever has received from the divine bounty a large share of temporal blessings, whether they be external and material, or gifts of the mind, has received them for the purpose of using them for the perfecting of his own na-ture, and, at the same time, that he may employ them, as the steward of God’s providence, for the bene� t of others.

In the same vein, Leo XIII held that voluntary contracts may be deemed unjust when the contracting parties are too unequal in their wealth and power. As Pope Paul VI later put it in “Pop-ulorum Progressio” (1967), referring back to these teachings, “The rule of free consent remains subservient to the demands of the natural law.” And on a global scale, Pope Paul VI noted, free trade between nations must also be subject to the demands of social justice.

Church teaching describes the moral framework of property rights as the “universal destination of goods.” Yes, the church avers, property is and should be (mostly) privately owned. Private property boosts e� ciency, protects the family and enables the middle class to resist the predations of the state. Yet property must also be understood as a public trust; the needs of humanity must take precedence over individual claims to property, especially when the needs of the poor or the environment are at stake.

In line with this great tradition, Pope Francis aims at nothing less than re-establishing a moral foundation for our local, national and global econom-ic dealings, by spreading the church’s teachings of social justice, which has roots in Jewish teaching as well. But beyond speci� c doctrines, the pope is invoking universal themes that are shared by many major religions, as well as by agnostics and atheists, whom he recently invited to join in the quest for justice and peace. He writes that an inter-religious dialogue “which seeks social peace and justice is in itself, beyond all merely practical considerations, an ethical commit-ment which brings about a new social situation.”

The Pope’s moral code

Pope Francis is reinvigorating a widely if not universally shared moral code, one that has been suppressed by the glam and glitter of our media age and hijacked by the idolatry of private property (which the pope likens to the golden calf). With his joy and humility, Francis is trying to awaken us from our stupor, from what he calls “the

globalisation of indi� erence.”Pope Francis appeals to us to re-

awaken our personal moral awareness. We know not what we do, he tells us, because:

Almost without being aware of it, we end up being incapable of feel-ing compassion at the outcry of the poor, weeping for other people’s pain, and feeling a need to help them, as though all of this were someone else’s responsibility and not our own. The culture of prosperity deadens us; we are thrilled if the market o� ers us something new to purchase. In the meantime all those lives stunted for lack of opportunity seem a mere spec-tacle; they fail to move us.

My own profession of econom-ics has exempli� ed this deepening demoralisation. In its quest for “sci-enti� c rigor,” mainstream economics long ago shed its traditional interest in a moral framework. A profession that started out as a � eld of moral inquiry had, by the 20th century, become a cheerleader for egoistic materialism, with little or no concern for moral inquiry. Human well-being, once a central interest of the moral philos-ophy of the classical economists, in the hands of 20th-century economists became virtually synonymous with one’s purchases and possessions.

There have been three disastrous consequences of the globalisation of indi� erence. First, society at large, including the elites of � nance and academia, abandoned interest in the fate of the poor or even came to blame the poor for their condition. Second, � nancial markets were deregulated, and market trade became the test of morality itself.

Even as the major Wall Street banks peddled toxic assets to unsuspecting foreign buyers, thereby stoking a � nancial bubble that burst in 2008, the chief executive o� cer of Goldman Sachs declared that the � rm was, after all, doing God’s work since it helped create wealth and jobs. Third, my own profession of economics aided and abetted this process by shedding its professional moral code as many rushed to lucrative jobs on Wall Street. The award-winning documen-tary movie “Inside Job” exposed an economics profession that had lost its moral compass.

The results are devastating. Income inequality in the United States is at the highest level in a century, if not more. Wall Street illegality and corruption nearly brought down the world econ-omy. And at a time of unprecedented global wealth, impoverished people around the world have often been left to fend for their own survival against terrible odds.

Consider a recent shocking

example. The Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria is the world’s central institution to fund the � ght against these three killer diseases. Through modern science, these diseases are treatable and often preventable. The Global Fund has saved millions of lives by dispensing medicines and preventive meas-ures like anti-malaria bed nets. Yet, when the Global Fund appealed for a replenishment of its funds this past year, asking $5 billion from the world’s governments and companies to tend to hundreds of millions of the world’s poorest people, it came up short, rais-ing only $4 billion.

The shortfall of $1 billion will cost considerable death and su� ering, as clinics run out of life-saving com-modities. Yet this $1 billion is less than the paychecks of several hedge fund owners in 2013. It is less than one day’s Pentagon spending. It is less than $1 per year for each person in the high-income world. Why did the Global Fund come up short? There is only one reason, and no justi� cation: the globalisation of indi� erence.

A reinvigoration of a global eco-nomic moral code can be our lifeline in the 21st century. At a time when our societies are driven by unprecedented inequality, when six million children

under the age of � ve worldwide could be saved each year from premature death and when reckless destruction of the earth’s environment puts the lives of humans and millions of other spe-cies in peril, it will be our attitudes, our moral judgments, that will be the most important determinants of our fate.

At this stage of history, humanity is at a crossroads, with the future course of our own choosing. We have the technical means to solve our nation-al and global problems—to banish poverty, � ght disease, protect the environment and train the illiterate and the unskilled. But we can and will do so only if we care enough to mount the e� ort.

We face a moral crisis much more than a � nancial or economic crisis. And for this reason we must o� er our grat-itude to Pope Francis. He has lovingly reminded us that our highest aspira-tions really are within our grasp. l

Je� rey D Sachs is director of The Earth Institute, Quetelet Professor of Sustainable Development and Professor of Health Policy and Management at Columbia University in New York City. He is also special adviser to UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon on the Millennium Development Goals and author of The End of Poverty (2005). His most recent book is To Move the World: JFK’s Quest for Peace (Random House, 2013). This article is published under special arrangement.

7Long Form Tuesday, June 3, 2014DHAKA TRIBUNE

An economist considers Pope Francis’ critique of capitalism

The bane of global indi� erence

The culture of prosperity deadens us; we are thrilled if the market o� ers us something new to purchase. In the meantime all those lives stunted for lack of opportunity seem a mere spectacle; they fail to move us

Society at large, including the elites of � nance and academia, abandoned interest in the fate of the poor or even came to blame the poor for their condition

Dr Patrick Angelo wraps a homeless man in blankets under the overpasses on Lower Wacker Drive in Chicago REUTERS

The predominance of global indi� erence makes starvation commonplace WIKIMEDIA

Tuesday, June 3, 2014DHAKA TRIBUNE World8

Abbas swears in unity government, Israel shunnsn Reuters, Ramallah

President Mahmoud Abbas swore in a Palestinian unity government on Monday under a reconciliation deal with Hamas Islamists that led Israel to freeze US-brokered peace talks with the Western-backed leader.

Abbas, who heads the mainstream Fatah movement, has said the 17-mem-ber cabinet would be comprised of unaf-� liated ministers and that it would strive to pursue peace, despite Hamas’s refusal to accept co-existence with Israel.

Ministers in the new administration took the oath of o� ce in a ceremony in Ramallah, the Palestinian seat of gov-ernment in the Israeli-occupied West Bank. Three ministers from the Hamas-run Gaza Strip were denied entry to the West Bank by Israel.

“Today and after announcing the government of national unity we declare the end of division that caused cata-strophic harm to our cause,” Abbas said.

Hamas has run the Gaza Strip since seizing the territory from Fatah forces

in a brief civil war in 2007. Past recon-ciliation e� orts, largely brokered by

Egypt, have failed over power-sharing.Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Ne-

tanyahu has urged world leaders not to rush into recognizing the new Palestin-ian government, saying it would serve as a front for Hamas and “strengthen terrorism.”

At the inauguration ceremony, Ab-bas said the new government would abide by commitments made by pre-

vious Palestinian administrations and by agreements rati� ed by the umbrella Palestine Liberation Organization, a ref-erence to interim accords with Israel.

On Sunday, US Secretary of State John Kerry, who spearheaded the peace e� orts that collapsed when the unity deal was signed in April, spoke by telephone with Abbas and voiced his concern about Hamas’s role in the government, State Department spokes-woman Jen Psaki said.

Israel, the United States and the European Union regard Hamas as a terrorist group over its refusal to rec-ognize Israel, accept existing interim Israeli-Palestinian peace deals and re-nounce violence.

In his telephone call, Kerry stressed the importance of the new govern-ment committing to those principles, Psaki said.

“The Secretary stated that the Unit-ed States would monitor the situation closely and judge any government based on its composition, policies, and actions,” she added. l

Britain may soon have Muslim and Hindu holidaysn Agencies

An online petition urging politicians to create a bank holiday for Hindu festival Diwali and Muslim celebration Eid has attracted more than 119,000 signatures and could be debated in the House of Commons, Daily Mail reported.

If applied, it would be the � rst non-Christian religious holidays in Britain and could lead to calls from other faiths for their events to also be recognised.

As the e-petition has reached 100,000 signatures it has to be considered in par-liament under rules set up in 2011.

Nationalists have complained that St George’s Day and St David’s Day are not holidays but an e-petition calling for these days to be marked has only 34 signatures.

Diwali is described as the ‘Festival of Lights’ and is celebrated by Hindus in the Autumn while Eid is held at the end of Ramadan when Muslims break their fast.

Details of the petition are said to have been passed to the Backbench Business Committee, which will con-sider its suitability for debate.

Set up by Jon Timmis, it states: ‘I believe that, given the number of Muslims and Hindus in this country it is only fair we allow them to have the most important days in their faiths rec-ognised in law.’

The e-petition has sparked wide-spread debate on internet forums and social media, especially those aimed at British Muslims and Hindus. While religious and community leaders have distanced themselves from the idea, popular opinion is evenly split. l

Hamas hails unity government ‘of all Palestinians’“We hail the national consensus government, which represents all the Palestinian people.”

Abbas hails ‘end’ of Palestinian division“Today, with the formation of a national consensus government, we announce the end of a Palestinian division that has greatly damaged our national case.”

New therapy wipes out cervical cancer in two womenn AFP, Bethesda

Aricca Wallace knew she was nearly out of time.

For more than three years, she had su� ered cramping and irregular bleed-ing, which her doctor thought was a side e� ect of her birth control implant, known as an intrauterine device, or IUD.

Her annual Pap smears were always normal, so no one suspected cancer.

Except it was cancer, and by the time the 34-year-old mother of two had the IUD removed and was � nally diag-nosed, her tumors had reached stage three and the disease was spreading through the lymph nodes in her abdo-men and chest.

“I was told by a specialist that there wasn’t any chemo that could kill it,” Wal-lace told AFP. “And that I’d be gone in a year.”

That was in February 2012. A few months later, Wallace’s doctor told her about an immunotherapy trial at the Na-tional Institutes of Health Clinical Cen-ter, a research hospital just outside the US capital.

Wallace enrolled. Doctors removed one of her tumors and collected some of the immune cells that were surround-ing it. They selected speci� c T-cells that would attack human papillomavirus.

HPV is a common sexually transmit-ted disease, and most adults get it at some point in their lives. While HPV is often harmless, some strains can cause genital warts or lead to cancers of the cervix, anus, head, neck and throat.

Some 70% of cervical cancers are caused by HPV types 16 and 18.

The idea behind HPV-targeted adop-tive T-cell therapy is to boost the body’s

immune response to HPV in the tumors.Wallace � rst endured a week-long

regimen of strong chemotherapy to knock out her immune system. Then came the infusion, which aimed to re-build her defenses with more than 100 billion of her lab-grown T-cells that tar-geted the tumors.

After that, she was given two doses of aldesleukin, which helps the immune cells grow.

The treatment can lead to serious side e� ects like bleeding, vomiting, low blood pressure, � uid retention, confusion, fe-ver and infection.

“It was the worst fever I ever had,” re-called Wallace.

But it worked. Her tumors grew steadily smaller. Four months after the infusion, all the tumors were gone.

On May 29, Wallace visited the NIH Clinical Center again for scans, which showed no disease, marking 22 months since the start of her experimental treatment.

“It is a miracle, honestly,” said Wal-lace, now 37.

Immunotherapy is a promising � eld that has shown some early successes against the deadly skin cancer melano-ma and a handful of other cancers.

Wallace is the � rst person with cervi-cal cancer on whom this novel approach has worked.

A second US woman has also seen her metastatic cervical cancer disappear completely and is still disease-free one year later.

But they are just two of nine patients in total. A third woman responded for a short time, but then her cancer returned. The treatment did not help the other six women in the study. l

Old-school to new-wave: Spain under King Juan Carlos

n Tribune Desk

King Juan Carlos, who announced plans to abdicate on Monday, helped guide Spain to democracy after the death of dictator Francisco Franco. From old-school family values to women’s rights and gay marriage, Spanish society was transformed in the four decades of King Juan Carlos’s reign.

The democratic rebirth he oversaw spawned fast but fragile economic growth that later plunged Spain into economic crisis, however.

When a 37-year-old Juan Carlos was crowned on November 22, 1975, he took the throne of a deeply conservative society.

After 40 years under the dictator Gener-al Francisco Franco, Spain was just starting to reap the fruits of industrial development.

Since then, “the main changes have been economic growth, immigration, women

joining the job market and public life, and an international openness,” said Maria Angeles Duran of the state research body CSIC.

Annual per capita income in Spain soared from 12,600 euros ($17,170) to 22,700 euros between 1980 and 2011, according to adjust-ed data from Spain’s central bank.

Former defence minister Jose Bono recalled how relatively undeveloped the Castile-La Mancha region was when he became its president in 1983.

“There were 80,000 homes that had no indoor bathrooms, 108 villages that had no electricity, there was not one single kilometre of highway,” he said.

“Now we have some of the most ad-vanced infrastructure on the planet.”

After Franco’s death in 1975, Spanish leaders overseen by Juan Carlos thrashed out a new political system in a historic process known as the Transition.

Opposition political parties were legalised and a constitution passed in 1978, granting new freedoms to Spaniards under a system of parliamentary monarchy.

Following the long dictatorship, Span-iards accepted a “constitutional and demo-cratic form of monarchy,” said Luis Palacio Banuelos, a historian at Madrid’s King Juan Carlos University.

Divorce was legalised in 1981 and gay marriage in 2005.

With new freedoms came a cultur-al boom, symbolised by the so-called “movida” – a new wave of nightlife, music and � lm centred on Madrid in the 1980s that nurtured the likes of � lmmaker Pedro Almodovar.

The economy � ourished, particularly after Spain in 1986 joined the European Economic Community, the precursor to today’s European Union, gaining access to its development funds.

A graft scandal had eroded the king’s popularity in recent years. His daughter Princess Cristina and her husband, Inaki Urdangarin, are under investigation over alleged embezzlement of 6 million euros in public funds through his charity.

He himself faced accusations of being out of touch when caught on a lavish pri-vately-funded elephant-hunting trip while Spaniards at home were su� ering deep and sustained economic recession and high unemployment.

His unexpected decision to abdicate in favour of his son Prince Felipe was an-nounced by Prime Minister Mariano Rajoy. He said the king, whose health is failing and who has had � ve operations in two years, was stepping down on personal grounds. l

Calm returns after battle as divided e ast Ukraine city awaits faten Reuters, Donetsk

Uneasy calm returned to the streets of Donetsk on Wednesday after the big-gest battle of a pro-Russian separatist uprising ineastern Ukraine, a con� ict transformed by the landslide election of a pro-European leader who has vowed to crush the revolt.

Government forces killed dozens of rebel � ghters on Monday and Tues-day in an assault to retake the airport, which the rebels had seized the morn-ing after Ukrainians overwhelmingly elected Petro Poroshenko as president.

Pro-Moscow  gunmen have de-clared the city of a million people capital of an independent  Donetsk People’s Republic.

After the government assault - the � rst time Kiev has unleashed its full military force against the � ghters after weeks of restraint - morgues were � lled with bodies of rebel gunmen. Some were missing limbs in a sign of the mas-sive � repower used against them.

The separatist authorities say as many as 50 died, including a truckload of wounded � ghters blasted apart as they were driven away from the battle-� eld. The government said it su� ered no losses in the operation, which saw its aircraft strafe the airport and para-troops land to reclaim it.

Poroshenko, a billionaire confec-tionary magnate who became the � rst Ukrainian since 1991 to win the pres-idency outright in a single round of voting, repeated his promise to restore government control rapidly over seces-sionist-held areas.

“We are in a state of war in the east. Crimea is occupied by Russia and there is great instability. We must react,» he told  Germany’s Bild newspaper. “The anti-terrorist operation has � nally be-gun in earnest. We will no longer per-mit these terrorists to kidnap and shoot people, occupy buildings or suspend the law. We will put an end to these horrors - a real war is being waged against our country.”

His swift o� ensive has thrown down a challenge to Russian President Vlad-imir Putin, who made defending Russians in other parts of the  former Soviet Union  a pillar of his rule since declaring his right to use military force in Ukraine in March.

Moscow  has demanded Kiev halt the military operation in the east, but Putin has also announced the with-drawal of tens of thousands of troops he had massed on the frontier. A Nato o� cer said on Wednesday thousands of Russian troops had indeed been pulled out, although tens of thousands were still in place. l

Senior Hamas leader Ismail Haniyeh gestures as leaves his o� ce as a former Hamas government Prime Minister, in Gaza City June 2. President Mahmoud Abbas swore in a Palestinian unity government on Monday under a reconciliation deal with Hamas Islamists that led Israel to freeze US-brokered peace talks with the Western-backed leader REUTERS

Cameron and Putin to talk Ukrainen Reuters, London

British Prime Minister David Cameron will hold rare face-to-face talks with Russian President  Vladimir Putin  on Friday in France at which he will urge Putin to help de-escalate the situation in  Ukraine, Cameron’s spokesman told reporters.

The meeting, which Cameron re-quested, will be held on the sidelines of the 70th anniversary of the World War Two D-Day landings in Norman-dy and is the � rst time the two have met since Prince Charles sparked a diplomatic spat by likening Putin to Adolf Hitler.

The Cameron-Putin talks were announced as tensions in  eastern

Ukraine  worsened with  Russia  accus-ing the Ukrainian authorities of esca-lating violence against civilians there, even as it o� ered Kiev a brief respite in a dispute over billions of dollars’ worth of unpaid gas bills.

“It’s an important opportunity ... to set out the importance of a dialogue between the  Russian government  and the new  Ukrainian government following the presidential elections,» Cameron’s spokesman said, saying the vote o� ered a chance to de-escalate the situation.

Britain has repeatedly con-demned  Russia  over Crimea and  east-ern Ukraine and o� cials said the meet-ing with Putin did not signify a return to «business as usual» with Moscow. l

Russia to submit UN resolution on Ukrainen Reuters, Moscow

Russia will submit a draft resolution to the UN Security Council on Monday calling for an immediate end to wors-ening violence in Ukraine and the cre-ation of humanitarian corridors in the east of the country, Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov said.

Lavrov said that Western nations had assured Russia the situation in Ukraine would improve after its May 25 presi-dential election but that “everything is

happening in exactly the opposite way.”“People are dying every day. Peace-

ful civilians are su� ering more and more - the army, military aviation and heavy weapons continue to be used against them,” he said when asked about Ukraine at a joint news conference after talks with his Mauritanian counterpart.

The draft resolution “will contain a de-mand for the immediate halt to violence and the beginning of actual negotiations with the aim of establishing a stable and reliable cease� re,” Lavrov said. l

A member of the ‘Donbass’ self-defence battalion takes part in a training at a base of the National Guard of Ukraine near Kiev, June 2 REUTERS

9Tuesday, June 3, 2014DHAKA TRIBUNE World

Afghan president fumes at prisoner deal made behind his backn Reuters, Kabul

The Afghan president is angry at being kept in the dark over a deal to free � ve Taliban leaders in exchange for a cap-tured US soldier, and accuses Washing-ton of failing to back a peace plan for the war-torn country, a senior source said on Monday.

The � ve prisoners were � own to Qa-tar on Sunday as part of a secret agree-ment to release Army Sergeant Bowe Bergdahl, who left Afghanistan for Ger-many on the same day.

The only known US prisoner of war in Afghanistan, Bergdahl had been held captive for � ve years.

“The president is now even more distrustful of US intentions in the coun-try,” said the source at President Hamid Karzai’s palace in Kabul, who declined to be identi� ed.

“He is asking: How come the prison-er exchange worked out so well, when the Afghan peace process failed to make any signi� cant progress?”

Karzai has backed peace talks with the hardline Islamist Taliban move-ment, which ruled Afghanistan be-tween 1996 and 2001 and has fought a bloody insurgency since then against US-led forces in the country.

But they have come to little so far, and the group has moved swiftly to dash hopes that the prisoner swap would rekindle peace talks between it and the Afghan government.

“It won’t help the peace process in any way, because we don’t believe in the peace process,” Taliban spokesman Zabihullah Mujahid said on Sunday.

The palace o� cial also said Karzai was worried about further deals being cut without his knowledge.

“It indicates that other deals could be negotiated behind the president’s back,” he said.

Karzai has yet to comment public-ly on a swap that is bound to deepen the mistrust of a leader who has been � ercely critical of the US administra-tion in recent years.

He is due to step down as president later this year, but many Afghans be-lieve Karzai will continue to wield con-siderable in� uence over policy from behind the scenes.

Karzai’s press o� ce said in a state-ment that the US deal to transfer � ve Taliban militants from a Guan-tanamo Bay jail to Qatar violated international law.

“No government can transfer citi-zens of a country to a third country as prisoners,” said the statement, issued on behalf of the foreign ministry.

In a hurry to leave?The prisoner swap has stoked wide-spread anger in Afghanistan, where many view it as a sign of a US desire to disengage from the country as quickly as possible.

Washington has mapped out a plan to fully withdraw all of its troops by the end of 2016.

Under the terms of the deal, cut by Qatari intermediaries, the � ve Taliban detainees were released from Guanta-namo Bay, Cuba, where they had been held since it opened in 2002, and � own to Qatar where they must stay for a year.

Senior o� cials at the Afghan intel-ligence agency say they believed the men would return to the battle� eld and bolster the insurgency just as most for-eign combat troops prepare to exit by the end of this year.

All � ve were classed as “high-risk” and “likely to pose a threat” by the Pen-tagon and held senior positions in the Taliban regime before it was toppled by a US-led coalition in 2001.

At least two of them are suspected of committing war-crimes, including the murder of thousands of Afghan Shi’ites, according to leaked US mili-tary cables.

The swap has similarly drawn pro-test from US Republican politicians who have called it negotiating with ter-rorists and warned the freed men will likely return to battle.

While Bergdahl’s release on Satur-day was celebrated by his family and his hometown, and could be seen as a coup for President Barack Obama as he winds down America’s longest war, Senator John McCain and other Repub-licans questioned whether the admin-istration had acted properly in releas-ing the militants.

“These are the highest high-risk people. Others that we have released have gone back into the � ght,” said Mc-Cain, a former prisoner of war and Viet-nam War veteran.

“That’s been documented. So it’s disturbing to me that the Taliban are the ones that named the people to be released,” he said on CBS’ “Face the Nation.”

As the Obama administration sought to counter the criticism, Bergdahl was � own to Landstuhl Regional Medical Center in Germany for medical treat-ment.

After receiving care he would be transferred to another facility in San Antonio, Texas, US defense o� cials said, without giving a date for his re-turn to the United States.

US Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel said he hoped the exchange might lead to breakthroughs in reconciliation with the militants and rejected accusations from Republicans that it resulted from negotiations with terrorists, saying the swap had been worked out by the gov-ernment of Qatar. l

Blogger uses crowdfunding to � ght PM’s defamation suitn AFP, Singapore

A Singaporean blogger sued for damag-es by Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong said Monday he had successfully raised fees for his legal defence in just four days through crowdfunding.

Roy Ngerng Yi Ling, a government health worker who posts comments on social issues, said 1,104 people had so far contributed more than Sg$72,000 ($55,700), exceeding his target of Sg$70,000 when he launched the cam-paign Friday.

Ngerng published the transaction history of his bank account on his crowdfunding platform. Many of the donors registered comments criticising Lee and opposing the use of libel suits to silence government critics.

Singapore o� cials have long used defamation suits against printed publi-cations to defend their reputations.

Ngerng was the � rst online critic

brought to court by a Singaporean leader.“Donations were mostly of small

denominations, and ranged from one cent to two thousand dollars,” Ngerng, 33, told AFP.

“I think it re� ects the people’s frus-trations with the current situation,” added Ngerng, author of a blog called “The Heart Truths.”

Lee � led the defamation suit on Thursday in the High Court, where the typical minimum value of claims for damages is Sg$250,000.

The prime minister alleged that a May 15 post by Ngerng contained state-ments accusing him of “criminal mis-appropriation” of public funds.

Lee had earlier rejected an apology and dismissed as “derisory” a compen-sation o� er of Sg$5,000 from Ngerng. The court will have the � nal say on the amount to be awarded.

A pre-trial conference has been set for July 4.

Lee’s lawyer said the post had sug-gested that the prime minister, who is the chairman of state investment agency GIC, “is guilty of criminal mis-appropriation of the monies paid by Singaporeans to the Central Provident Fund (CPF).”

GIC manages more than $100bn of the city-state’s foreign reserves. The CPF is the state pension fund.

Ngerng said Monday that for now, he would not “actively solicit for more funds as the target we set has been reached” but indicated he may seek help paying any damages awarded to Lee.

Eugene Tan, an associate law pro-fessor at the Singapore Management University, said the lawsuit has a “Da-vid versus Goliath ring to it.”

“There is a sense that the people who have contributed either identify with his cause or feel that the questions regarding the CPF Ngerng has raised is worth some support,” he told AFP. l

Pakistani journalist beaten in latest attackn AFP, Multan

A Pakistani journalist working with the country’s largest media group has been badly beaten, police said Monday, the latest attack on media workers in the country.

Zafar Aaheer, resident editor of the top-selling Urdu-language newspaper Jang, was attacked when he left his of-� ce in the southern city of Multan early Sunday.

Jang is part of the group that owns the country’s widely watched Geo TV and is currently at odds with the pow-erful military.

In April unidenti� ed attackers shot and injured senior anchor Hamid Mir, who hosted a popular talk show on Geo TV, in the southern city of Karachi.

The TV station became embroiled in a row with the military after it aired allegations that the powerful Inter-Ser-vices Intelligence (ISI) was behind Mir’s shooting. l

US prisoner swap sparks political � restormn AFP, Washington

The US decision to release � ve Taliban detainees from Guantanamo Bay in or-der to recover a soldier held in Afghan-istan sparked a furor in Washington, with Republicans warning Sunday the move put Americans at risk.

Republican lawmakers were unan-imous in their happiness about Satur-day’s release of Bowe Bergdahl after nearly � ve years in captivity – but quick to hit out at what they saw as setting a worrying precedent.

“Across northern Africa, the number one way that Al-Qaeda raises money is by ransom, kidnapping and ransom. We have now set a price,” said Mike Rogers, the Republican chairman of the House intelligence committee.

“If you negotiate here, you’ve sent a message to every Al-Qaeda group in the world that says – by the way some holding US hostages today – that there is some value now in that hostage in a way they didn’t have before. That is dangerous,” Rogers told CNN.

“That’s why so many of us are so concerned about what really is a break with US policy of not negotiating with terrorists.”

Washington often chides foreign gov-ernments suspected of paying ransoms to hostage-takers in order to secure the release of their nationals held abroad.

But Howard “Buck” McKeon, the Re-publican chairman of the House Armed Services Committee, said the deal bro-kered by Qatar to release the 28-year-old Bergdahl had given insurgents “a strong incentive to capture Americans.”

“That incentive will put our forces in Afghanistan and around the world at even greater risk,” McKeon said.

Even President Barack Obama’s � rst national security advisor, retired gen-

eral Jim Jones, said the risk posed to soldiers merited debate.

If enemy � ghters “think that the value of taking action against Ameri-cans and holding Americans is going to somehow help them achieve their goals, then they’re going to do that,” Jones told CNN.

Soldiers at risk?The IntelCenter monitoring group said the prisoner swap “dramatically increases the threat to all Americans around the world who are leading tar-gets for Al-Qaeda and their a� liates.”

Republican Senator John McCain, who was a prisoner of war in Vietnam at the infamous Hanoi Hilton, argued that the Taliban � gures released – all former o� cials in the 1996-2001 re-gime, and still in� uential – could again attack the United States.

“These are the hardest of the hard core. These are the highest high-risk people,” McCain told CBS television’s “Face the Nation” program, noting the men were “possibly responsible for the deaths of thousands.”

A Qatari source has said the men were due to remain in the Gulf state for one year. US o� cials have only said their movements and activities would be restricted.

Other Republicans went so far as to accuse Obama of breaking the law.

“In executing this transfer, the pres-ident also clearly violated laws which require him to notify Congress 30 days before any transfer of terrorists from Guantanamo Bay and to explain how the threat posed by such terrorists has been substantially mitigated,” McKeon and Senator James Inhofe said in a joint statement. l

This still image provided on December 7, 2010 by IntelCenter shows the Taliban associated video production group Manba al-Jihad December 7, 2010 release of US Sergeant Bowe Bergdahl (L) AFP PHOTO HANDOUT-INTELCENTER

Supporters of Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) shout slogans as police use a water cannon to stop them from moving towards the o� ce of Akhilesh Yadav, the chief minister of the northern Indian state of Uttar Pradesh, during a protest against recent rape and hanging of two girls, in Lucknow June 2. Three men were arrested for the crime in Uttar Pradesh that underscored the enduring culture of sexual assault in India and the capacity for appalling violence between Hindu castes. Two policemen were held on suspicion of attempting to cover up the killings. On Monday, Modi’s BJP sought to make political capital. Workers from the party accused the Uttar Pradesh state government, headed by Samajwadi Party, of negligence over the crimes and of being un� t to govern. Police � red water cannon at the protesters, who were demanding the state government be dismissed and the imposition of direct, presidential rule REUTERS

FLUSHING OUT RAPE-PROTESTS WHILE NEW REPORTS EMERGEWhile political protests and outrage poured in so did new reports of rapes from across the state that drew con-demnation even from the United Na-tions on Monday.

In Meerut, a 10-year-old girl play-ing outside her home was abducted and gang-raped by unidenti� ed men who later also tried to run her over with their car. She escaped with some broken bones, local police said. An-other young girl was raped by a man at knifepoint in her house in Gavada village under Fatehpur district, 80 km east of Kanpur. The man, identi� ed as Chotey Sahu, 24, was arrested.

Reports also came in on Monday that a woman was allegedly gang-raped and thrown in a ditch in So� pur village under Basai Mohammadpur police sta-tion of Firozabad district. She was spot-ted by police and admitted to the local government hospital. Three people had been arrested, DIG, Agra Range, Vijay Singh Meena told HT by telephone.

In the fourth incident, a 22-year-old woman was allegedly gang-raped and made to swallow acid in Bareilly. She was then strangulated. Her body with the face mutilated was recovered from a � eld in Aithpura village on Saturday. The autopsy report came in on Mon-day, Special Superintendent of Police J Ravindra Gaur said, adding that there was a possibility that the victim was from Uttarakhand. A police team has been sent there.

Meanwhile, police said they were building a watertight case using foren-sic evidences in the Badaun rapes. l

New state of Telangana is born in southern Indian Agencies

India’s southern state of Andhra Pradesh has formally split in two, with its northern area carved out to create a new state called Telangana.

The move followed prolonged pro-tests by residents of Telangana, who felt the region had long been neglected.

Telangana, which o� cially came into existence at midnight local time, becomes the country’s 29th state.

With a population of 35 million, it comprises 10 former districts of Andhra Pradesh and the city of Hyderabad.

Hyderabad, which forms the joint capital of the two states for the next 10 years, was covered with pink balloons, banners and � ags to mark Telangana’s statehood, says BBC Hindi’s Zubair Ahmed. Pink is the colour of the TRS.

“The sacri� ce of our people and the youth who led the movement has culminated in the formation of a new state. It is a historic day for us,” Krish-ank, a local student leader, said.

He said providing jobs to thousands of young people should be a top prior-ity of the new government. But there are also opponents of the division. One, A Ravi, said he was unhappy that his “beloved state had been torn apart.”

“It’s a sad day because we speak the same language and have no distinct identity. Politicians played a dirty role in dividing the state into two,” Mr Ravi, an info-tech professional, told BBC Hindi.

Andhra Pradesh and Telangana share the same language of Telugu.

Correspondents say the large state

of Andhra Pradesh was deeply divid-ed economically, with people in the less-developed Telangana region feel-ing largely neglected.

India’s upper house approved a bill to carve out the new state in February, despite opposition from lawmakers in the Congress Party, which governed Andhra Pradesh.

The then chief minister of Andhra Pradesh state, Kiran Kumar Reddy, re-signed after parliament approved the bill.

Opponents are unhappy that Hy-derabad, which is home to many major information technology and pharma-ceutical companies, would become a shared state capital.

After 10 years, Andhra Pradesh is ex-pected to develop a new capital.

The ministry of home a� airs (MHA) is yet to provide boundary details to the Survey of India.

“Once the MHA provides us with the � nal boundaries of the state, we will in-corporate them and release the o� cial map. Some of the district boundaries in Telangana will become state boundar-ies with other states,” an o� cial of the Survey of India said.

When contacted, surveyor general of India Swarna Subbarao said it would take 10 days to draw the Telangana map after getting details from the MHA.

The Union government had last week promulgated an ordinance merging some villages and mandals of Khammam dis-trict in Telangana with Andhra Pradesh (Seemandhra) in a bid to deal with reset-tlement and rehabilitation of those dis-placed by the Polavaram project. l

India treated Nawaz like a schoolboy, says Imran n Agencies

Pakistan Tehreek-i-Insaf chairman Im-ran Khan on Monday said that Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif was treated like a schoolboy in India, DawnNews re-ported.

Speaking to media representatives outside the Parliament House in the fed-eral capital, Khan said that by not meet-ing representatives of the Hurriyat Con-ference in New Delhi, the prime minister had struck a bargain on Kashmir.

Khan questioned that if the premier could meet lead and cement traders in New Delhi, why couldn’t he hold a meeting with those representing the Hurriyat Conference.

He said that a clerical mistake had taken the vote bank of Pakistan Muslim

League – Nawaz (PML-N) from seven million in 2008 to 12.5m in 2013.

Khan said issues were being run on stay orders for the past one year, add-ing that massive rigging had occurred in the 2013 election yet political leaders were hiding behind the guise of such orders.

The PTI chairman said several legal fora had been approached over the is-sue of rigging.

Separately, Khan said that President Mamnoon Hussain’s address to the joint sitting of the Parliament made no mention of minorities.

Khan said the war against terrorism had compounded the problem of ex-tremism in the country, adding that the army had been pushed to � ght in North Waziristan on US directives.

Editorial10 DHAKA TRIBUNE Tuesday, June 3, 2014

CODE-CRACKER

ACROSS1 Perfume (5)4 Fish (4)7 Slippery catch (3)8 Jump on one leg (3)9 Stupid (5)12 Agitate (4)13 Sounds as small bell (7)15 Sweet potato (US) (3)16 Eyelid a� iction (3)18 Corded fabric (3)19 Helpful hint (3)21 Goes back (7)24 Colour (4)26 Nose (animal) (5)27 Droop (3)28 Land measure (3)29 Swarm (4)30 Replenish (5)

DOWN1 Religious denomination (4)2 Light and clear red (6)3 Dash (4)4 Employer (4)5 Liable (3)6 Regretful (5)10 The heavens (3)11 Review unsparingly (5)14 Sends out (5)17 Time of holding (6)18 Mechanical man (5)20 Play on words (3)21 Quantity of paper (4)22 Soft sheepskin leather (4)23 Meat dish (4)25 Employ (3)

CROSSWORD

How to solve: Fill in the blank spaces with the numbers 1 – 9. Every row, column and 3 x 3 box must contain all nine digits with no number repeating.

SUDOKU

How to solve: Each number in our CODE-CRACKER grid represents a di� erent letter of the alphabet. For example, today 6 represents F so � ll F every time the � gure 6 appears.You have two letters in the control grid to start you o� . Enter them in appropri-ate squares in the main grid, then use your knowledge of words to work out which letters go in the missing squares.Some letters of the alphabet may not be used.As you get the letters, � ll in the other squares with the same number in the main grid, and the control grid. Check o� the list of alphabetical letters as you identify them.

CODE-CRACKER

CROSSWORD

SUDOKU

YESTERDAY’S SOLUTIONS

CALVIN AND HOBBES

PEANUTS

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Hizb-ut Tahrir now incorporating RohingyasMay 27

Vikram KhanOn May 26, this paper published an article about the Rohingyas under the headline, “Rohingyas: The most persecuted minority in the world.” I’ve strongly op-posed that article (in writing) because the Rohingyas are destabilising the security in the southern region of Bangladesh. Furthermore, as I’ve said before, they’ve a very strong and visible in� uence on local politics (Jamaat is very strongly represented in poli-tics in Cox’s Bazar). Rohingyas are engaged in illegal activities (drug tra� c, robbery, land grabbing, and deforestation) in Bangladesh, and should be send back to Burma (Myanmar) without further delay.

Rohingyas are not our problem but the problem of Myanmar. However, this problem cannot and will not be solved until and unless the government of Bangladesh bans the international non-government organisations (INGOs) from the southern region of our country. These INGOs are attracting thousands of Rohingya refugees with unlawful promises (free food, free healthcare, free housing, free education etc), creating a never-ending security problem in Bangladesh.

Imzy Vikram Khan: This selfish attitude is not right and is a product of pathetic colonialism and how it’s brainwashed so many fools. Rohingyas are Bengalis. They are a subset, just as I am (as a Sylheti). Our dialects are different from the Standard Bangla, but we’re Bengali; forces have tried to cut away Bengalis, so that Singhbhumis, Surjapuris, Goalpariyas and now Rohingyas are not seen as Bengali anymore. Western Myanmar was meant to go to East Pakistan in the 1940s.

Kmak Vikram Khan: Let me ask you this: When Boko Haram kidnapped the schoolgirls, you held the whole Muslim world accountable. Why is it when it comes to the plight of the Rohingyas, they are not our problem?

Rodders Kmak: The Muslim world is accountable because they allow extremist hate groups, like Boko Haram, to be the mouthpiece of the religion. So far I have not seen any sort of indignation, or protests from the

Muslim world whatsoever, regarding the mass kid-nappings of the Nigerian schoolgirls. But God forbid some no-mark cartoonist from an obscure foreign newspaper draws an image of Mohammad. Muslims start killing each other in protest.

The Rohingas are not our problem because they aren’t from this country, period. Their forefathers have been in Burma for centuries, and seriously, they do not contribute anything to this country, apart from drug dealing, joining shady groups like the Hizb-ut Tahrir, and allowing themselves to be manipulated by Jamaat. Yes, we as compassionate humans, should feel for their plight with regards to their statelessness and oppression, but allowing them to destabilise our country is not the way to go. Putting pressure on Burma is.

kmak Rodders: “The Muslim world is accountable because they allow extremist hate groups, like Boko Haram, to be the mouthpiece of the religion. So far I have not seen any sort of indignation, or protests from the Muslim world whatsoever, regarding the mass kidnappings of the Nigerian schoolgirls.”

Actually, numerous Muslim organisations all over the world have condemned the actions of Boko Har-am. These include Al Azhar, CAIR, the Fiqh Academy of OIC, the Indonesian Ulema Council, MPAC and more. What is your excuse for being ignorant of these condemnations? Or is it that you tried to pull a fast one by lying about Muslim disapproval?

“The Rohingas are not our problem because they aren’t from this country, period.”

The kidnapped schoolgirls aren’t Bangladeshi either. So why do you hold Bangladeshi Muslims ac-countable for what some Nigerians did?

“They do not contribute anything to this country.”Neither do the mendicants on the streets. Where

should we deport them to?

Rodders kmak: Nitpicking sections from my reply, and basing an argument on that just simply proves you really don’t want to debate about the main issue, that you want to argue for the sake of arguing, and it’s really counterproductive.

‘... But he is not a Pathan, he is only Shakib’May 27Ri� at Imam AudithoIf any commentator has praised Shakib in the IPL, it’s Harsha Bhogle. Whenever Shakib has batted lower down the order, multiple times Bhogle has said: “Shakib is a top-class international player who bats at 3/4 for Bangladesh regularly.” In cricket, if you “time” the ball really well, then boundaries really don’t matter. Even Parthiv Patel can hit a 100 metre six. So does that make Parthiv a “stronger” player than Shakib??

If you had seen the match properly, you would have noticed that just before Shakib got out, Pathan hit an almost impossible six without even timing the ball. So Harsha was just refer-ring to that, even a miss hit from Yousuf Phatan can go for six. On the other hand, there is no shame in getting out on a mistimed stroke. It is cricket after all, not wrestling, where you need to have strong muscles. Shakib is a world-class all-rounder and will remain so. He doesn’t need any mis-timed six to prove his worth. :)

nahiyan_dhaka1 Ri� at Imam Auditho: Thanks for the input, really appreciate that. I don’t know if you have noticed, but I’d mentioned very clearly that his record as a commentator does speak for itself. And yes, that includes his positive remarks about Shakib. In fact, that is why I found the comment to be a bit disturb-ing. Rookie commentators can get carried away in the heat of the moment, but it is not expected from seasoned commentators like Harsha Bhogle.

Looking to ChinaThe Federation of Bangladesh Chambers of Commerce and Industry

is leading a delegation of business leaders to China this week, ahead of the prime ministers forthcoming visit.

China has been a major provider of assistance for infrastructure projects in Bangladesh, such as the Padma bridge, and is responsible for $1.42bn of accumulated direct investment in Bangladesh, creating over 76,000 jobs.

As this is still relatively small compared to the fast-growing scale of trade between Bangladesh and China, there is a lot of potential for this to grow much higher.

The FBCCI’s suggestion that Bangladesh should o� er either an industrial park or a special economic zone speci� cally for Chinese investors has consid-erable merit. It will provide a way to highlight the country’s geographical and cost bene� ts at a time when more and more Chinese businesses are looking to invest in Bangladesh.

Both Bangladesh and China have given strong support to progressing the Bangla-desh-China-India-Myanmar Eco-nomic Corridor, which should help to underpin our growing trade ties with the world’s second-largest economy.

China’s strong track record in developing infrastructure in particular o� ers many bene� ts for Bangladesh if we can continue to develop our mutual ties. Its companies also have world-beating experience in manu-facturing and are increasingly looking to move more production to lower cost economies.

As the standard of living rises in China, it is looking to boost consump-tion and imports generally. We hope the forthcoming talks and trade visits can help cement deals to improve our mutual trade and investment links.

Smooth barriers to PPP

Bottlenecks at the approval and planning stages are slowing down the implementation of public-private partnership initiatives in the country.

In recent years, budgeted funds have been underutilised and carried over because potential investors and partners have been failing to sub-mit satisfactory proposals. It is right for the government to be cautious in expending taxpayer funds and to ensure due transparency in the awarding of PPP contracts.

However, the slow pace of implementation of mooted projects is a cause for concern at a time when many businesses are looking for new investment opportunities.

The government should speed up its review of the policy framework to try and encourage more successful PPP initiatives.

Implemented properly, PPP initiatives o� er the quickest available route to making much-needed improvements to the country’s infrastructure.

Key projects, notably the development of the metro rail and the Dhaka elevated expressway projects, have depended on PPP in order to get o� the ground. Improve-ments in infrastructure are vital to make the economy more productive and to attract more foreign direct investment.

There are a host of sectors, such as transport and tourism, where PPPs can leverage capital and expertise to build better infrastructure. The government should look to emulate examples of successful PPP projects in other countries, as part of its review.

We cannot a� ord the opportunity costs of failing to maximise oppor-tunities to use PPP to help build the improved communication links and power sources, which the economy needs to develop and grow.

Speed review of the policy framework for PPP

There is a lot of potential to improve our trade and investment links with China

The new rajahsMay 28Evil people politicsMaybe we need to witness the rise of an hon-est-to-goodness despot in this century, to � nally realise how much worse everything is now?

No bed of roses for ModiMay 27

RonnieI can’t fathom what is so especially “bold” about new Indian PM Narendra Modi’s decision to invite fellow Saarc leaders for his swearing-in ceremony in New Delhi. Nor do I see how this gesture by Mr Modi is necessarily taken to mean his extending a “hand of friendship” to India’s neighbours. If only such platitudes were more true and less trite.

CNG-run auto-rickshaw strike in capital

May 27

SirnayemThese auto-rickshaws should be banned! The

drivers of these vehicles are charging passengers triple the government-advised fare. They also

refuse to go anywhere when a person is in need.

Shirin: Modi to actively consider Teesta deal

May 27

rimbusDuring the meeting, the Indian premier congrat-

ulated the Bangladesh government on its huge victory in the last general elections, said the

speaker. Shame on her. A huge victory or a huge mock-

ery and robbery??

A B C D E F G H I J K L M N O P Q R S T U V W X Y Z

11Op-Ed Tuesday, June 3, 2014DHAKA TRIBUNE

n Ikhtisad Ahmed

A man left law school before completing his under-graduate course. Many years later, as he faced life without a shiny certi� -

cate, he was to remember the distant autodidactic afternoons spent becom-ing an accomplished writer. By then, he had had a distinguished career in journalism, written the seminal work of the magic realism genre, shown no inhibitions in expressing strong political views and espousing equality and justice, and been granted a shiny medal by the Swedish Academy. The revolutionary writer Gabriel Garcia Marquez passed away on April 17 of this year.

Still mourning the loss of a man who had been the very de� nition of “litterateur,” the world bid farewell to Maya Angelou a little over a month later. Obituaries have focused on their writings and awards, columns have been ballads composed to celebrate their lives and lament the world being poorer without them. Homag-es to these inspirational, powerful, beautiful lives continue to pour in, as they should, trying to preserve them a while longer, or perhaps trying to be close to them. After all, the words they gifted humanity with guarantee their immortality. Having touched so many lives, it is expected that some of them would try to touch them one last time with their own meagre words.

To label Maya Angelou an activist –

that coveted title so many aspiring and current writers, particularly from third world countries or backgrounds, give themselves – is to do her a disservice. She believed in the beauty of life being in adversities, its worth being in overcoming them. She showed this to the human race in the way she lived, and in what she wrote. A person not to have taken inequality and injustice lightly, she did not belittle activism with dishonest actions.

The causes she fought for were always greater, always more important, than herself. The heartfelt, resilient, joyful commentary on the failures of the world and the triumph of human beings was that of an unbreakable survivor.

Her writing was her activism. That Angelou, writing from the fringes where she lived, is a part of the cultural main-stream is testament to that. Ironically, the vast majority of those seeking to emulate her, those very same self-pro-claimed activist-writers and writer-ac-tivists, wish to bask in the glory of popularity and celebrity. Their carefully measured words echo sentiments that

are conventional and appropriate, which brings them recognition.

Validation and applause drive the modern writers, particularly of the developmentally challenged variety. Their journeys begin with striving to be the best in school. That opens the doors to an enviable Western educa-tion. The only thing more treasured than an Occidental education is a creative writing degree, failing that a literature-related doctorate. A litera-

ture-adjacent postgraduate degree is sneered at, all else is dismissed.

Once they have honed their skills of neatly packaging and selling their exotic wares, they zealously pursue agents and publishers. This education of success, and the constant a� rma-tion of being successful, fail to teach them the only certainty of the life of a writer – failure, and the challenge of reacting to it. Therefore, these myopic contemporaries do not dare go where Marquez and Angelou have been. They are also more inclined to standing on the shoulders of giants to appear tall rather than bettering themselves to rise above the cacophony of medioc-

rity. The process is tailored to dilute honesty and literary integrity.

Marquez and Angelou did not concern themselves with or give the appearance of doing something, they actually did it. Their bravery and productivity come not from an innate need for importance or congratula-tions, nor from a desperate desire for relevance or aggrandisement. Unlike many pretenders to the throne who populate the world with their pseu-do-intellect, accompanied by generous helpings of self-promotion, the greats penned their thoughts and construct-ed palaces out of their words because it was necessary.

Their work came � rst, which is why they have been elevated to a rare� ed pantheon beyond the grasp of mere mortals. The wordsmiths of today need to take note rather than chase af-ter meaningless labels and limelights.

In a world that makes very little sense, that sees confusion and misin-formation spread instead of knowledge to handicap the masses so that they may be easier to control, words have power. Realising that, upholding their glory, is the key to the better future humanity craves. The late greats per-severed so that people may see that. Their words still reverberate, and their successors need to be primed to follow in their footsteps to keep the echoes of all that is right and true alive. l

Ikhtisad Ahmed is a writer and an erstwhile lawyer. He can be contacted on Twitter via @Ikhtisad. 

The mighty penF R O M T H E M A R G I N S

n Syed Ishtiaque Reza

Finance Minister AMA Muhith is going to place his consecutive sixth budget in the parliament

on June 5 for the 2014-15 � nancial year. The � nance division will seek approval for a proposal that may range between Tk250,000cr to Tk255,000cr.

De� cit will range between Tk67,000cr to Tk68,000cr, and e� orts will be there to keep the de� cit under 5% of the projected GDP as usual.

The initial size of the budget for the ongoing � scal was Tk222,491cr which was later trimmed to Tk211,220cr.

The � nance minister, in most of the pre-budget discussions, said the gov-ernment would look for incorporating two of its major political pledges in the upcoming budget – creating more jobs, and encouraging foreign and local investments.

But an analysis of the outgoing budget gives us a di� erent picture. We see that the poverty situation didn’t improve and the joblessness is also on the rise as there was no invest-ment spree. Despite the very poor status of implementation, the Annual Development Program (ADP) for the coming � scal year is once again a huge Tk86,000cr.

“The next budget will be big because our economy has expanded over the years. Moreover, we need a big budget in order to recover from the political destruction su� ered during hartals and blockades last year,” Mu-hith recently told business journalists.

The budget every year gives a number of promises. But the rate of savings and investment to the GDP has remained stagnant over the years, and the gap between savings and invest-ment has assumed an increasing trend lately, suggesting that the govern-ment’s macroeconomic strategies fall short of converting the savings into investments and holding back the possibility of capital � ight.

Whatever the size of the budget may be, it surely will raise the ques-tion of whether it is realistic or not. Meeting the expenditure needs of the budget for the next � scal will require the acceleration of the growth rate of the GDP. Otherwise, revenue collec-tion e� orts will su� er a setback as it faced in the outgoing � scal year.

The government has revised down the revenue target for the current � scal by 8.09% to Tk125,000cr due to a collection shortfall in the � rst seven months that went through political volatility ahead of the national elec-tion held on January 5. The target was revised from Tk136,090cr as set out at the budget for FY2013-14.

For the next � scal year, the growth rate of this GDP – that represents the aggregate value of goods and services produced in an economy – is likely to be once again projected at 7% as said earlier. Given the likely state of the politics, law and order, and the shattered con� dence in business and

economy, the achievement of the pro-jected GDP growth target in the next � scal will really be a daunting task.

There are some valid reasons for these worries. The seven murders in Narayanganj, the gruesome murder in Feni, the continued killing in the greater Noakhali belt, and the pace of enforced disappearances across the country do not give the people the sense that business is running as usual.

Investors are in a quandary about whether they should invest or wait for a better time. Political violence is not apparent right now. But people, particularly businesses, want to see that the parties reach a broad political consensus on the major issues.

Besides external support in the form of grants and loans, the gov-ernment will be required to borrow heavily to meet the gap between its overall expenditure and revenue receipts. This amount of fund, to be collected through net borrowings from the banking system and saving instrument, will be a major portion of the budget de� cit.

The domestic borrowings of the gov-ernment every year – particularly from the banking system – results in crowding out the e� ect on private investments. It is apprehended that the borrowings will rise in the coming � scal too.

The private sector credit growth has faced a declining trend in the beginning of the second half of FY2013-14, re� ect-ing a worrying investment climate. The coming budget for the next � scal will thus face its main challenge in areas of ensuring the availability of � nancial assets. We don’t want to consider a budget by its size only. It is the opera-tional management of the government to ensure both the quality and direction of public-sector spending.

Without a strong political commitment, proper implementation of the budget is unlikely. The economy moves if the law and order works smoothly. A sound eco-nomic rationale also largely depends on a prompt policy decision process.

Such decisions are needed to make the budget an e� ective tool to bring the desired changes to the existing state of � scal management and broad-er areas of economic governance. The coming budget will hopefully give us a strategy that will generate increments in productive capacity, and will pro-vide avenues for the regular people to obtain their due shares. l

Syed Ishtiaque Reza is Director of News, Ekattor Television.

n Garga Chatterjee

My parents, both of whom went to Bangla-medium schools, had decided to send me to an

English-medium school. Among other things, this was a marker of relative a� uence. From Kolkata’s insular perch, it was perceived to be an essential lu-bricant to socio-economic ascendency. It was also true that much of Kolkata’s upper-middle and middle classes had deserted public institutions – schools and hospitals were the major casualties of this trend because institutions of the poor and administered by the rich with-out a stake in them run very poorly.

This reality may have also worked in my parents’ minds – the only son needs to succeed and earn. In the 144 municipal wards of Kolkata, there were only a few Bangla-medium schools that matched the English-medium schools in the public imagination. This illusion of being the choicest medium of success-ful (however de� ned) education was perpetuated partly by a cabal of “good” English schools (places where the supe-riority of people-like-us was ingrained as ideology), which competed against each other and created their own legends.

Public imagination is not the same as a public examination and this is where many of these English-medium schools were cut to size. The West Bengal state board examination results (Delhi head-quartered education boards are numerically marginal in

West Bengal and much of the Indian Union and hence irrelevant in this discussion – they are non-marginal in other ways but that is a di� erent topic) brought into our consciousness these “others,” some in Kolkata but mostly in other districts of West Bengal, who competed successfully with “us” and often out-competed us.

What one must not forget is the competitive advantage English as a me-dium had, given that the elite had in-vested hard in English-medium schools when it came to infrastructure and most other things that state-funded public institutions could not match. But still they matched them. And when I gained admission to my undergraduate institution, a medical college, I saw that a majority of my classmates came from a non-English-medium background.

The odds of gaining admission to a medical college in West Bengal were far higher if one was from the Bengali-me-dium Bankura Zilla School than from my alma mater South Point High School or one of the “elite” English-medium schools. One saving grace of my high school was that it was English-medium only in name. We wrote our an-swer-scripts in English, but the instruc-tion and rebuke was in Bangla.

Thankfully, there was no ideology (or “manners”) that was taught – making unlearning an easier and less self-destructive process. The alienated chose to be alienated and they had their circles and “hobbies.” By Mother

Saraswati’s grace, most of us remained Bengalis writing answer-sheets in Eng-lish. I felt that this long introduction to my background was necessary for readers to know where I come from. Disclosure is good practice.

By the constitution of the Indian Union, not all languages are created equal. Hindi and English have a soft place in the heart of the four-lion emblem of the Union that stares down at every citizen. On May 6, 2014, when the � ve-judge constitutional bench of the Supreme Court of India struck down the 1994 language policy of the Karnataka government that mandated that either Kannada or the mother tongue be the medium of instruction for classes I to IV.

The judges cited the lofty ideal of freedom of expression and speech as well as protection of minority rights. It said that no mother tongue can be “forced” onto a child. It has been wide-ly documented that mother tongue in-struction is far superior when it comes to grasping ideas and foster creative thinking. In fact, all the judges agreed that children “learn better” when ini-tially taught in their mother tongue.

One can easily guess which sector of society will feel most “persecuted” by the 1994 language policy of the Kar-nataka state government. This is the same class that increasingly converses in English with people from the same mother tongue. Some of them even sco� at the idea of mother tongue in

this “globalised era of cosmopolitan ethos.” Lord Macaulay must be a very happy man today.

The judgement goes against the spirit of the National Curriculum Framework of 2005 that also points out that a child’s mother language or home language is the “best medium of in-struction.” This judgement is a triumph of the powerful Anglicised class which has typically punched above its weight.

The implications of this judgement go beyond the court matter. It signals the con� dence of the elite in using the language of rights to marginalise the masses. This is a shameful tactic that is not only limited to the question of language.

Let us be very clear on a few things. This push comes from the “English and Hindi-ised” sectors of the Indian Union, the most vociferous cheerlead-ers of the new Indian project. By their inordinate grip over certain urban cen-tres (Bangaluru, Delhi, Mumbai), they

have been exerting an in� uence over the policy that they cannot otherwise gain by democratic means.

Karnataka’s populist Chief Minister Siddaramaiah knows that his people have no great clamour against mother tongue instruction. In recent times, Karnataka has been one of those few states that have tried to restore the dignity of their languages. The deliberate marginalisation that comes with terms “regional” or “vernacular” language has now become normal.

If the judiciary is so concerned about freedom of speech and ex-pression, and rights of linguistic minorities, it might want to look at the primacy accorded to English and Hindi. A staggering majority of the people in the subcontinent does not know English. The same goes for Hindi outside the “Hindi-ised” belt.

The elites and decision-makers of the subcontinent come from a class that would start perspiring if they were asked to only speak in their mother tongue, even for a week. The classes of people who actually perspire due to hard labour that puts food on the ta-bles of the urbane and the entrenched elites can accomplish this easily.

The subcontinent is almost unique to have a class that looks to non-moth-er tongues with so much pride. No wonder, when it comes to scienti� c creativity, China, Russia, South Korea, Japan, etc surpass this nation. What is common between these nations is that

their mother tongue is their language of instruction, often all through the university level. The narrative of in-compatibility between “higher educa-tion” and mother tongue is a creation of the self-serving Anglicised classes of a subcontinent whose privilege and entitlements would be threatened and their “authentic spokesperson to goras” status threatened if mother lan-guage education in the subcontinent went the Japanese way.

But privilege doesn’t self-destruct. Hence we remain a self-hating land of forgotten mothers and persecuted tongues, good for creating a class of cyber-coolies and enthusiastic documenters of Euro-American mood-swings. From building high-rises to making highways, the real heavy lifting in the cosmopolitan cyber-cool-ie haven of Bengaluru is done by Kannada mother tongue folks.

Next time, look at the counter-girl in a chain-co� ee store, uncomfortable in her dress. You walked up to her and placed an order in English. She breaks into Kannada when you are not looking. We are all complicit in the annihilation of her cultural self. Per-verse word play is displayed when the calls for the rights of the marginalised majority is denounced as chauvinism. Freedom of speech and expression, anyone? l

Garga Chatterjee is a freelance contributor. He can be followed on twitter @gargac.

Are all languages created equal?

The subcontinent is almost unique to have a class that looks to non-mother tongues with so much pride

The coming budget will hopefully give us a strategy that will generate increments in productive capacity

In a world that makes very little sense, that sees confusion and misinformation spread instead of knowledge, words have power

What the next budget promises

Writers shouldn’t chase meaningless labels BIGSTOCK

Apurbo impressed with Shokh’s ‘improvement’n Milan Afridi

Apurbo and Shokh will pose as a married couple in the single episode play “Varia-tions.” Written by Ashraful Chanchal and directed by B U Shubho, the drama fea-tures the kind of love that keeps a marriage together, the daily hustle and the ups and downs of married life.

About working with Shokh, Apurbo said: “I am enjoying working with Shokh, her acting has improved remarkably. I am also counting on the audience to like us as a couple. Very few onscreen pairs went on to be as popular as the Afzal-Suborna duo. It takes producers, directors and the audience to make a pair successful.”

Shokh said: “At present, I am taking a breather. I only work when I get a good script and the script of 'Variations' is very well written. Apurbo is a great co-actor, I have worked with him only once before and this time around, I have enjoyed myself a lot.”

The play will be aired during Eid. l

EntertainmentDHAKA TRIBUNE Tuesday, June 3, 201412

TheatreShesh RokhhaBy NatyajonTime: 7:00pm – 8:30pmExperimental TheatreBangladesh Shilpakala AcademyShegun Bagicha

Exhibition Of Man and Earth IITime: 12pm – 8pmBengal Art Lounge, Gulshan Avenue,Rd-131, Circle -1,

Lost in the Urban WorldGroup art exhibition

Dhaka Art CenterDhanmondi 7/A

Can You Handle the Truth?Time: 9:30am – 8:00pmEMK CenterRoad No. 16Dhanmondi

TODAY IN DHAKA

Bappa Mazumder’s new solo hits market soon

n Hasan Mansoor Chatak

Bappa Mazumder’s 10th solo album with the proposed title of “Jani Na Kon Montore” will be released during Eid. A total of ten songs

and two instrumentals composed by the talent-ed artistes will be placed in the album.

A song written by Sanjeeb Choudhury, Dol-chut’s deceased member is placed in the track list while other songwriters include Bappa Mazum-der, Zul� qar Russell and Masum Rana. Mostly rock-melody numbers are selected along with tracks covering romance and so-cial reality.

Bappa, who is releasing his solo album after a hia-tus of two years, told the Dhaka Tribune: “When I feel that I am done with several good pieces which are going to be loved by the audience, I put these in my album. I am very particular

about my work, since my fans have a lot of expectations from me.”

Bappa also expressed his earnest interest to work on an album which will be entirely ded-icated to Sanjeeb Choudhury, along with the band. l

Sonakshi’s ‘cool’ braided lookn Entertainment Desk

Bollywood actor Sonakshi Sinha had to sit for two hours to get her hair tied in a braid, everytime she had to shoot for her role in the forthcoming action � ick "Holiday: A Soldier is Never O� Duty.”

The actor, who has luscious locks said she had always wanted to

sport the braided look, and the � lm gave her a chance to ful-� l the wish. She is impressed with the � nal outcome of the � lm, which releases on June 6.

Sonakshi said: “Here, I am playing a boxer, so I thought I had to do it and I did it. It looked quite cool

and convincing too.” Produced by Vipul Shah,

presented by Reliance Entertain-ment and directed by A R Muru-

gadoss, the � lm features Ak-

shay Ku-m a r essaying

the role of a ded-i c a t e d army of-� cer. l

Who is the fourth lead in Morichika?

n Hasan Mansoor Chatak

Redoan Rony, the director of the upcoming � ick “Morichika” clari� es that Bidya Sinha Saha Mim will not be replacing Faria. “Faria remains as Tahsan’s heroine, while Mim will play another lead role,” said Rony.

So far, the cast of the movie includes Tah-san, Nusrat Faria and Bidya Sinha Saha Mim. Many speculations are in the air about the fourth character who will star opposite Mim. It is rumoured that the duo of Mim and the

mystery character will most likely overpow-er the Tahsan-Nusrat Faria pair.

The � lm, “Morichika,” is based on the young generation and the felicity and mis-eries that come with every romance nowa-days.

The director was asked about his plans for the � lm as his previous � ick garnered several National Film Awards including the Best Actor (female) and the Best Actor in a Negative Role. Rony answered: “The success of the actors of ‘Chorabali’ surpassed my ex-

pectations. This time, I will also allow the actors to improvise and act accordingly.”

Like his previous � lm, “Morichika,” is also an action thriller centered around a city’s underworld crimes.

However, Rony claims it to be complete-ly di� erent from “Chorabali.” “I will exper-iment with the regular expressions of a ro-mantic-action � lm.”

The shooting is scheduled to start this August while the � lm will hit the cinemas at end of this year. l

Rest in peace Anjan Dasn Entertainment Desk

Indian Bangalee � lmmaker Anjan Das, best known for � lms like “Saanjhbatir Rupkatha-ra,” “Achin Pakhi” and “Faltu,” passed away yesterday following liver cancer, family sourc-es said.

His 2006 � lm “Faltu” which featured Sou-mitra Chatterjee and Indrani Halder won the National Award for the best feature � lm on welfare. A poignant tale on refugees, it was based on Syed Mustafa Siraj’s story “Ranir Ghater Brittanto.”

In 2004, his � lm “Iti Srikanta” bagged the National Award for Best Audiography. “Jara Brishtitey Bhije Chilo,” based on a poem by Goswami, won the special director’s award at Almaty, Kazakhstan besides fetching the jury special award for the director in Spain.

Having started his career with a 1976 box-o� ce � op “Sainik,” he changed his track to make documentaries, only to return to cin-ema a few years later. l

Sumaiya Shimu rebels against oppressorsof society

n Entertainment Desk

Drama serial “Naari” portraying the drawbacks of a male dominated society, will air tonight at 8pm on Maasranga TV. The protagonist Sumaiya Shimu be-lieves that acting is not only performing on screen but working with an aim in mind and in “Naari,” Sumaiya is seen as a rebellious character who � ghts back against the oppressors in a male domi-nated society.

The plot is set in the capital. Ronti and her husband Azad live in an apart-

ment. Suddenly, Azad gets arrested by the police and Ronti has no clue as to why it happened. The police do not allow her to talk to her husband and a helpless Ronti seeks legal help from her neighbour, who happens to be an ad-vocate. However, the neighbour plays a dirty game with Ronti and she under-stands that he will be of no help. She becomes the victim of inappropriate approaches from the male characters of her surrounding. Hence, Ronti begins a new journey where she struggles to pro-tect herself from the stalkers. l

Robert Pattinson to play Indiana Jones

n Entertainment Desk

Robert Pattinson is reported to be the “sur-prise favourite” to star in the rebooted version of the “Indiana Jones” movie.

The “Twilight” hunk is claimed to be at the top of Disney bosses’ list to portray the iconic movie hero made famous by Harrison Ford, reported MTV online.

“Producers have asked their casting de-

partment for a top 10 list of potential Indies, who must have wide-ranging appeal.

“Insiders say they hope to reboot the fran-chise with two quick � lms in succession, so would need a three-year commitment from their leading man,” a source said.

It is also reported that the other big names on the list are Channing Tatum, Chris Pine, Chris Hemsworth and Pattinson’s “Twilight” co-star Kellan Lutz. l

n Entertainment Desk

Creinse Limited has become the Exclusive Mar-keting and Dis-tribution Partner of the 2014 FIFA World Cup o� -cial music album in Bangladesh. “One Love, One Rhythm” has been produced by Sony Music Entertainment and features some of the biggest music artistes of the world, says a press release. The album was launched globally on May 12.The 14-song album will feature the o� cial song of 2014 FIFA World Cup “We are One (Ole Ola)” by Pitbull featuring Jen-nifer Lopez and Claudia Lette along with the o� cial anthem “Dar Um Jeito (We will � nd a way)” featuring Carlos Santana, Avicii, Wyclef and Alexandre Pires.

The album will be available through the sales campaign in-tegrations of a leading brand in Bangladesh.

Limited editions will also be released through select out-lets, and online. l

Creinse to distribute FIFA World Cup album

Creinse to distribute FIFA World Cup album

13DHAKA TRIBUNE

WOMEN’S CRICKET LEAGUE

Sharmin hits brilliant tonn Sharmin Akhter’s unbeaten 105 run knock helped Jahurul Islam City Crick-et Club to an emphatic 141 run win over Urban Sports and Cultural Dev while Gulshan Youth Club beat BKSP by six wickets.

However, the other match of the day between Ansar-VDP and Rayer Bazar Athletic was abandoned due to rain at the

Dhanmondi Cricket stadium yesterday. After electing to bat � rst in a 21 over

match, Jahurul Islam City Cricket Club’s two opening batsmen Sharmin and Rub-ya Haider gave their side a � ying start as Sharmin played a blistering knock of 105 o� just 65 balls smashing 17 fours while her partner Rubya remained unbeaten on 66 o� just 61 balls with 6 boundaries. Such a solid foundation paved the way for Jahurul Islam City Cricket Club to

post 189 without losing any wicket after 21 overs. In reply Urban Sports could only manage to score 48/8 to su� er a humil-iating defeat by 141 runs at the BKSP-4 ground.

In the other match at the BKSP-3 ground, BKSP posted 66/6 against Gul-shan Youth Club in a 17 over match. Chas-ing 67 to win, Gulshan Youth club reached their target quite comfortably in 11.3 overs for the loss of just four wickets. l

Streak up for challenge n The new bowling coach of Bangladesh cricket team and former Zimbabwe-an fast bowler Heath Streak regarded Bangladesh as his second home after his arrival at the Hazrat Shah Jalal In-

ternational airport yesterday evening. The big Zimbabwean also said that he was looking forward to take the chal-lenge of working with the bowlers of Bangladesh.

The 40 year old looked very upbeat as he greeted all the media persons present at the airport by giving ‘salam’ and said, “Nice to be here in Dhaka. My � rst match was here in Dhaka when I played for Zimbabwe. So I’m happy to be here. It’s like my second home.”

The former Zimbabwe captain also added that he was looking forward to take the challenge. “I’ve seen lots of them. We’ve played against them and watched them a lot when I was coach-ing the Zimbabwe team,” he said.

However, the new bowling coach for the Tigers did not talk in detail as the Zimbabwean will meet the press today at the Sher-e-Bangla National Stadium.

Streak’s � rst assignment with the na-tional side will be the three match ODI series at home against India. The short series is scheduled to begin on June 15 at Sher-e-Bangla National stadium.

The former Zimbabwe all-rounder played 65 Tests and 189 ODIs between 1993 and 2005 and took 455 international wickets (216 in Tests and 239 in ODIs) at an average of 28.14 and 29.82 in Tests and ODIs respectively. He also scored 4933 international runs (1990 runs in Tests and 2943 in ODIs). Apart from facing Bangladesh six times in Tests and 10 times in ODIs, Streak also played domestic cricket in Bangladesh. l

Tuesday, June 3, 2014

Sport 14 15 Ronaldo looks to avoid Ballon d’Or curse

Did you know?Wayne Rooney has played more games

(8) at World Cups without scoring than any other

England striker in the competition’s history

Germany, France held, Belgium see o� SwedenDAYS TO GO

9

CEAT CRICKET RATINGS AWARD 2014Inform Shakib adjudged best T20 all-roundern Bangladesh’s star cricketer Shakib al Hasan received the ‘ Best T20 all-round-er’ award at the prestigious Ceat Cricket Ratings Award 2014 after his brilliant performance for Kolkata Knight Riders in the IPL this season. The award giving ceremony was hosted by former Paki-stani batsman Rameez Raza in Mumbai yesterday.

“We had ups and downs throughout the tournament,” said Shakib. He credit-ed Uthappa’s consistency, Narine’s bril-liance and the contributions of the sup-port sta� s behind KKR’s success.

The star all-rounder was instrumen-tal in Kolkata Knight Riders’ title win-ning IPL campaign this season with both bat and ball. His economical bowling this season helped his side in most of the matches as the left-arm spinner’s 11 wickets in 13 matches at an economy rate of 6.68 saw him become one of the most economical bowlers of the tournament.

However, the left hander shined equal-ly with the bat also as he recorded his high-est IPL score of 60 runs this season on his way to amassing 227 runs from 13 match-es with an enviable average and brilliant strike rate of 32 and 149 respectively.

KKR’s another star batsman Robin Utthappa, who was in terri� c form with bat this season, was awarded the Indian Domestic Cricketer of the year while an-other opening batsman Shikhar Dhawan was named the ODI player of the year. The young Indian cricketer of the year award went to Vijay Zol. l

Narinda win Pioneer Leaguen Narinda Junior Lions Club emerged as the champions of the Dhaka City Cor-poration Pioneer Football League after edging past Araf Sporting Club 1-0 in the � nal at the Bangabandhu National Stadium yesterday.

Shohag Mia scored the all important goal in the 13th minute of the game, but goalkeeper Wahiduzzaman Hridoy also played a crucial part as he guarded Narinda’s goal to make sure the scoreline remained unchanged until

the � nal whistle.Shohag skipped past a defender to

break into the penalty area before chip-ping the ball over onrushing goalkeeper Shohan to � nd the back of the net. Na-rinda dominated the opening half and though Araf tried to stage a comeback in the second-half by creating plenty of chances, it all went in vein following poor � nishing skills. Narinda custodian Wahiduzzaman was adjudged the play-er of the � nal while Arifur Rahman of Akku Football Academy was named as the player of the tournament. l

Will savour this moment for a long time: Shakib KKR all-rounder wants to take his time basking in his IPL glory

You just can’t stop smiling, can you?(Laughs) An IPL victory – two times in three years – I can’t feel better than this. I wasn’t there last year for the Kolkata Knight Riders; maybe that is the reason we lost (chuckles). There were a lot of ups and down in the tournament this year, but the way we stuck together as a unit was amazing.

A big run-chase in the Final; did it bring back memories of 2012? I wanted to bat till the end for my team and would have loved to be in the middle when the winning run was hit, just like in 2012. I did not � nish the game, but it didn’t matter as long

as we won at the end of it. This is a team sport and no matter who contributes, if we are on the winning side, we are more than happy.

Was the team confident of chasing that target of 200?To be honest, I was very con� dent of the run-chase. We were scoring briskly from the � rst over and had a good score at the end of 10 overs. We had scored at a healthy run-rate and we backed ourselves to get the rest of the runs. The only way we could have lost was if we would have lost too many wickets in a hurry. We never got behind the required run-rate and we knew we had enough players in the team who

would contribute and win the match for us.

Chasing 191 in 2012 and 200 in 2014 – what is with KKR and these huge run-chases?(Laughs) We hope we win in 2015 as well, but don’t have to chase such a huge total ev-ery time in the Final. We would be more than happy if we have to chase down somewhere close to 160 (chuckles).

And what a day for Manish Pandey to get a big one!Absolutely! The way Manish Pandey bat-ted and paced his innings was remarkable.

There was a talk in the dressing room that he was long due for a big one, and what a day he chose to come to the party.

What has been the highlight of the victories in 2012 and 2014?If you look at 2012 and 2014, both victories in the Final were a result of consistent per-formances on the trot. We had a lot of wins in succession in 2012 as well, and this year, we sprung up nine consecutive victories. It is an excellent performance by the entire team. I don’t want to compare the two vic-tories, I just want to enjoy this moment and savour it for a long time. l

Heath Streak arrives at the Hazrat Shah Jalal International airport yesterday evening

Rewind the clock to the 2012 IPL Final. Nine required o� the last over – Manoj Tiwary and Shakib al Hasan are in the middle. The Chennai Super Kings are in a long meeting amidst the tension, Tiwary has a blank look on his face, Shakib is on his haunches. Four deliveries later, KKR are crowned champions. Flash forward to 2014

– Shakib sure knows a thing or two when it comes to a steep run-chase in a grand � nale, in the � nal over. The only di� erence is, this time he was in the dugout and not at the non-striker’s end. As Shakib says, he would have loved to hit the winning runs, but he was more than satis� ed that his team was crowned champions for the

second time. The excerpts from the Bangladeshi all-rounder’s interview with iplt20.com are given below –

Tiviakov promises to give his best to Bangladesh n Prominent Dutch Grandmaster Sergei Tiviakov pledged to deliver his best to improve the game of the local players after taking charge of Bangladesh na-tional chess team yesterday. He urged to provide long-term training programme for the Bangladesh chess players adding that they also need more international experience to develop the game.

The highly rated former Dutch chess champion will coach four Bangladeshi Grandmasters and one International Master for one month ahead of the 41st Chess Olympiad in Tromsa, Norway in the � rst week of August.

The second ranked chess player in Netherlands, Tiviakov is currently ranked 86th worldwide among the ac-tive players with a rating of 2656. His previous visits to Bangladesh were in 1997 and 1998 to take part in interna-tional tournaments.

“I know this country, I know its chess tradition and I know the local players. So I accepted the o� er,” said Tiviakov who met Bangladesh’s � rst GM Niaz Morshed in 1993 in India.

The federation wanted Tiviakov’s service for more than one month, but the Dutchman was only interested to work for the short period. Tiviakov, however, also admitted the training

period is short and said, “One month is not enough but it is a very good step to develop the game of chess in Ban-

gladesh. I hope it will be helpful for the players in the next Olympiad in Trom-so. From my part, I will do my best to help the players improve their game and achieve better result in future.”

The Soviet Union born Dutch will

coach Niaz Morshed, Ziaur Rahman, Abdullah Al Rakib, Enamul Hossain Rajib and Minhaz Uddin Ahmed Sagor.

“They (Bangladesh players) have good potential but the problem is that they don’t have international experience. They don’t play in strong tournaments and I think they are heavily underrated. If they play more against strong players their rating will grow and they will become stronger,” he added.

Tiviakov earned the GM title in 1991 and clinched the Dutch Chess Champi-onship in 2006 and 2007 before adding the European Individual Chess Cham-pionship to his tally in 2008. l

Narinda Junior Lions Club players celebrate after clinching the title of the Dhaka City Corporation Pioneer Football League at the Bangabandhu National Stadium yesterday

Ashraful plays in USA with BPL probe ongoingn Mohammad Ashraful, who is currently serving an inde� nite suspension by the BCB after confessing to being involved in corrupt activities during the Bangladesh Premier League, was recently allowed to participate in a tournament that was for-mally sanctioned by the USA Cricket As-sociation. The event, the $20,000 cash prize LA T20 Championship, took place in Los Angeles from May 23-26.

Speaking to ESPNcricinfo, USACA ex-ecutive secretary Mascelles Bailey said he was unaware of any banned player participating in the tournament. He ac-knowledged that event organisers had applied for and received sanctioning approval from USACA. However, Bailey says unless there are people employed on the ground to monitor speci� cally who is playing, it is di� cult for USACA to police.

As recently as May 15, USACA sent a memo notifying members that any inter-

national players that may be participating need formal approval. It followed Danish Kaneria’s involvement at the unsanc-tioned USA Friendship Cup T20 in Hous-ton, Texas. Five players contracted by the Pakistan board were � ned by the PCB for playing in the USA Friendship Cup with-out obtaining no-objection certi� cates.

Yet, no such concerns appear to have been raised about Ashraful’s involvement and his face was printed on tournament � yers promoting the event. “There are some technical things with Ashraful,” LA Organiser Mehul Dave said. “He’s not a banned player, just temporarily suspend-ed. That is what I was told by the team that he represented. We acknowledged that with everyone else and everyone was okay with him participating so that’s why he played. There’s a di� erent level of suspension. Danish Kaneria has a life ban from the ECB and he’s not allowed to play any kind of ICC event and that is not the case I believe with Ashraful.” l

Kolkata Knight Riders’ allrounder Shakib al Hasan and his wife Umme Ahmed Shishir pose for a photo with KKR owner Shahrukh Khan and the IPL trophy during their celebration party in India on Sunday COURTESY

I know this country, I know its chess tradition and I know the local players. So I accepted the o� er

Germany, France held, Belgium see o� Sweden in warm-ups n Germany and France were held to draws while Chelsea duo Eden Hazard and Romelu Lukaku scored for Belgium in the latest batch of World Cup warm-ups on Sunday.

Fellow Brazil-bound Cameroon came from behind to claim a 2-2 draw against Germany. All four goals came in an entertaining second-half as Camer-oon, coached by German Volker Finke, came within a whisker of a historic � rst win over Germany.

The Africans took a shock lead through another Chelsea player, Sam-uel Eto’o, on 62 minutes only for Ger-many to equalise four minutes later through Thomas Mueller.

Andre Schuerrle then gave the hosts the lead before Cameroon left-wing Eric Choupo-Moting, who plies his trade in the Bundesliga for Mainz 05, popped up with the 78th-minute equaliser.

Down on a rainy Cote d’Azur Franck Ribery started on the bench in France’s

1-1 stalemate with Paraguay.Substitute Antoine Griezman had

appeared to give the French victory when he curled home an 82nd right foot shot before Victor Caceres silenced the partisan crownd in Nice, � icking home an 89th minute equaliser.

The match was the second Brazil buildup for Deschamps’ side after they brushed aside Norway 4-0 last Tuesday.

Hazard and Lukaku were on the mark in Belgium’s 2-0 win over Swe-den. Against a Swedish side missing their emblematic striker Zlatan Ibrahi-movic Belgium dominated throughout.

Lukaku, on loan to Everton last season, set Marc Wilmots’ side on the path to victory in the 34th minute, with Hazard doubling up after the break. l

Tuesday, June 3, 2014

Heat is on the rest, says WilkinsonAustralia are rank outsiders in a World Cup group containing champions Spain, Holland and Chile. But Socceroos defender Alex Wilkinson says all the pressure is on his team’s rivals. “We’re more than happy to go out and play with no pressure,” Wilkinson Sunday told reporters at the Australian base in the southeastern coastal city of Vitoria. “There’s going to be a lot of pressure on the other three teams in the group to beat us, whereas we can go out and relax and hopefully play some good football and cause some surprises,” said the 29-year-old. – AFP

‘Re-run vote if corruption proved’The vote for the hosting of the 2022 World Cup must be re-run if corruption allegations surrounding Qatar’s winning campaign are proved to be accurate, Lord Goldsmith, a member of FIFA’s Independent Governance Committee, said on Monday. A British newspaper on Sunday claimed it had evidence that around $5 million was paid to o� cials in

return for votes for Qatar’s successful bid, allegations organisers have “vehemently” denied. – Reuters

Final test for un� nished venueThe Sao Paulo stadium hosting the opening match of the World Cup staged a second test game Sunday but well below capacity, with one section tem-porarily closed and another at half capacity on � re� ghters’ orders. The new Corinthians Arena remains an un� nished addition to the skyline in Brazil’s stylishly a� uent business hub, with the two incomplete seating sections

unable to accommodate fans as owners Corinthians met Botafogo for the test game before a crowd of 37,119 paying guests. – AFP

RESULTSGermany 2 2 Cameroon Mueller 66, Eto’o 62, Schuerrle 71 Choupo-Moting 78

United States 2 1 Turkey Johnson 26, Dempsey 52 Inan 90-pen

Sweden 0 2 Belgium Lukaku 34, Hazard 78

France 1 1 Paraguay Griezmann 82 V. Caceres 89

Ribery hoping to be � t despite back problemn France winger Franck Ribery is su� er-ing from a lower back problem which is severely hampering his preparations for this month’s World Cup, a national team o� cial con� rmed to AFP on Monday.

Ribery missed France’s 1-1 draw with Paraguay at Nice’s Allianz Riviera in the second of their three world cup warm up matches and the Bayern Munich for-ward faces a battle against time to be � t for Sunday’s game with Jamaica.

“He’s had this problem for over six weeks,” the France o� cial said. “He has had further tests at a Paris hospi-tal and visited a specialist on Saturday morning before leaving for Nice.

“Since then, he has been following a programme aimed at getting him ready in under a week.”

The news con� rmed suggestions made by coach Didier Deschamps, who said after Sunday’s draw with Paraguay that “the aim is to have him available for the match against Jamaica next Sunday.”

“We can’t win every match 4-0 but there were a lot of good things tonight,” he said.

“On the free kick at the end, we probably retreated too much into our own box but we were playing a good team who know how to defend.

Deschamps will announce his � nal 23-man squad for Brazil later Monday, but the 45-year-old was quick to quash any rumours suggesting that Ribery was set to miss the World Cup, telling report-ers not to expect any big surprises. l

Germany drop Volland, Schmelzer, Musta� n

Germany will travel to this month’s World Cup in Brazil with only one out-and-out striker to end their 18-year wait for an

international title after coach Joachim Loew cut Kevin Volland from his � nal 23-man squad on Monday.

Ho� enheim forward Volland joined defender Shkodran Musta� and left back Marcel Schmelzer, still nursing a knee injury, as the three players left out of the � nal squad after being included in a provisional selection for a training camp in Italy.

“Obviously Shkodran, Marcel and Kevin are very disappointed and I an understand that because they had ev-ery right to hope they would be in Bra-zil,” Loew told reporters.

“All three are players who still have the chance to take part in several big tournaments in their careers.”

Volland’s exclusion came as a sur-prise given the stocky striker’s phys-ical strength and all-round play were seen as a good alternative to veteran forward Miroslav Klose, who will be 36 next week.

Attacking mid� elder Mario Goetze played as a striker in the 2-2 warmup draw against Cameroon on Sunday and that position can also be � lled by Thomas Mueller, on target in that game.

Loew included Borussia Dortmund’s Erik Durm, who can play as left back,

in the � nal squad after he won praise following his � rst cap on Sunday while also sticking with youngsters Julian Draxler and Matthias Ginter as well as mid� elder Chrstioph Kramer, who won his � rst two caps in the past weeks.

The coach, in charge of Germany for the fourth tournament, also kept faith in � rst-choice keeper Manuel Neuer and captain Philipp Lahm, both of whom are racing to get � t following injuries. l

Rossi absent from Italy World Cup squadn

Fiorentina striker Gi-useppe Rossi was the major absentee when Italy coach Cesare Pran-delli named his 23-man World Cup squad on

Sunday.Rossi’s exclusion was perhaps not

a huge surprise as he missed four months of the season due to injury and didn’t have enough time to rediscover his form and � tness to convince Pran-delli of his worth.

Versatile Napoli attacking player Lo-renzo Insigne instead joins forwards Mario Balotelli and Ciro Immobile, Se-rie A’s top scorer this season with 22 goals, on the plane to Brazil.

Parma veteran Antonio Cassano, who will play in his � rst World Cup, and Torino’s Alessio Cerci are also at-tacking options.

Another missing from the list was AC Milan mid� elder Riccardo Monolivo, whose World Cup ambitions ended when he su� ered a broken leg in Saturday’s warm-up against Ireland.

He has been replaced by former Liverpool mis� t Alberto Aquilani, now

with Fiorentina.There were no real surprises in mid-

� eld with veteran pair Daniele De Ros-si (Roma) and Andrea Pirlo (Juventus) joined by Paris Saint-Germain duo Mar-co Verratti and Brazilian-born Thiago Motta included. l

Work to be done at Corinthians stadium: Fifan

FIFA oversaw the � nal World Cup test event at the Corinthians arena on Sunday and o� cials said there was “a week and a half of hard work” ahead

to get the stadium ready for the opening match of the tournament on June 12.

Just 37,000 fans saw Corinthians draw 1-1 with Botafogo, far below the 68,000 capacity expected for the Bra-zil v Croatia game which will start the World Cup.

Some parts of the ground have still not been tested with fans inside and oth-ers will undergo adjustments in the com-ing days, said Tiago Paes, the local organ-ising committee’s operations manager.

“A lot will be done to change the look of the stadium,” Paes told reporters.

“It is adjustments, adjustments to the temporary structures, the setting up of the internet, the � nishing up of the executive boxes, putting in sofas, fridges, plants.

“Everything will improve, I have no doubt about that,” Paes added.

“Tra� c, metro, military police, ev-eryone is getting better. By the semi-� -nal for the World Cup they’ll be able to do it with their eyes closed as by then they’ll all know the stadium.”

The stadium was due to be ready in December but is one of several still un-dergoing last-minute preparations.

Nevertheless, Sunday’s Brazilian league game passed without any major incidents. l

Cameroon 1 Argentina 0 (1990)Argentina as defending champions opened the 1990 tournament in Italy against a Cameroon side that had few recognised stars. However, Fran-cois Omam-Biyik’s headed goal, helped by an awful goalkeeping error by Nery Pumpido, gave them an astonishing 1-0 win in a game that their raw tackling saw them reduced to nine men. “We hate it when European reporters ask us if we eat monkeys and have a witch doctor. We are real football players and we proved this tonight,” said Biyik. Cameroon exited the tournament in the quarter-� nals, heads held high and one of the few bright spots of the � nals. The Argentines, with Diego Maradona their sole creative outlet, somehow made it to the � nal but left unloved through a mix of their diving and brutal attitude on the pitch. –AFP

GREAT WORLD CUP SHOCKS Episode 7

Cameroon players celebrate their historic win against Argentina at the 1990 World Cup

Cameroon players celebrate their goal

Scolari blasts team after trainingn

Brazil coach Luiz Felipe Scolari on Sunday crit-icized his World Cup hopefuls after a training session which he said “did not please me at all.”

Brazil take on Panama in their penul-timate World Cup tune-up on Tuesday ahead of their � nal friendly with Serbia on Friday and Scolari said he was resting skipper Thiago Silva, Fernandinho and Paulinho. Of the training session which had so displeased him, Scolari said: “I

did not like training, I liked nothing. Ev-erything was wrong,” stormed the man who took the Selecao to the 2002 title.

He told Globo television the players appeared too loose for his liking just 11 days before their � rst World Cup pool match against Croatia in Sao Paulo.

“When I don’t like things, I have to � nd a solution and � eld it on the pitch until I am satis� ed,” said Scolari.

The training session saw the � rst-choice eleven beat the reserves 3-2 with Neymar on target for the former in front of watching actress girlfriend Bruna Marquezine. l

Israel beats Honduras in friendlyn World Cup-bound Honduras su� ered a second de� ating friendly defeat in four days on Sunday as they were beaten 4-2 by Israel.

Honduras’ defense struggled all night and Israel made the most of the openings they were o� ered.

Eran Zahavi grabbed the � rst goal for the Israelis, his 30-yard shot sailing past the outstretched hands of Hondu-ras goalkeeper Denis Escobar for a 1-0 lead in the 34th minute. l

German defence must improve, warns Khediran Real Madrid mid� elder Sami Khedira has told the Germany squad to improve their defence if they are to realise their dream of winning a fourth World Cup title.

Germany were held to a 2-2 draw by fellow World Cup candidates Cameroon in Moenchengladbach on Sunday with all four goals scored in the second-half.

Khedira says while the Germans are renowned for their attacking football, the side with the most organised de-fence will win the World Cup � nal in Rio de Janeiro on July 13.

Germany � nished third four years ago at the 2010 World Cup in South Af-rica, but Khedira says they will struggle in Group G against Portugal, Ghana and the USA unless they are tight at the back.

“You can’t win a tournament with just attacking football,” Khedira told German magazine Kicker.

“We were incredibly compact in 2010, everyone defended, which is something which we have lost since then.

“Before Euro 2012, I warned against always raving on about our great at-tacking football.

“We’ll win a few sympathy points by playing a nice attacking game, but that is no longer our goal. l

GoalkeepersManuel Neuer (Bayern Munich), Roman Weidenfeller (Borussia Dortmund), Ron-Rob-ert Zieler (Hanover 96)

DefendersJerome Boateng (Bayern Munich), Kevin Grosskreutz (Borussia Dortmund), Erik Durm (Borussia Dortmund), Benedikt Hoewedes (Schalke 04), Mats Hummels (Borussia Dort-mund), Per Mertesacker (Arsenal), Philipp Lahm (Bayern Munich)

Mid� eldersJulian Draxler (Schalke 04), Matthias Ginter (Freiburg), Mario Goetze (Bayern Munich), Christoph Kramer (Borussia Moenchengla-dbach), Sami Khedira (Real Madrid), Toni Kroos (Bayern Munich), Thomas Mueller (Bayern Munich), Mesut Ozil (Arsenal), Lukas Podolski (Arsenal), Marco Reus (Borussia Dortmund), Andre Schuerrle (Chelsea), Bastian Schweinsteiger (Bayern Munich)

ForwardsMiroslav Klose (Lazio)

SQUAD

GoalkeepersGianluigi Bu� on (Juventus), Salvatore Sirigu (Paris Saint-GermainG/FRA), Mattia Perin (Genoa)

DefendersIgnazio Abate (AC Milan), Andrea Barzagli (Juventus), Leonardo Bonucci (Juventus), Giorgio Chiellini (Juventus), Matteo Darmian (Torino), Mattia De Sciglio (AC Milan), Gabriel Paletta (Parma)

Mid� eldersAlberto Aquilani (Fiorentina), Antonio Candreva (Lazio), Daniele De Rossi (Roma), Claudio Marchisio (Juventus), Thiago Motta (Paris Saint-Germain/FRA), Marco Parolo (Parma), Andrea Pirlo (Juventus), Marco Verratti (Paris Saint-Germain/FRA)

ForwardsMario Balotelli (AC Milan), Antonio Cassano (Parma), Alessio Cerci (Torino), Ciro Immo-bile (Torino), Lorenzo Insigne (Napoli)

SQUAD

Cameroon striker Samuel Eto’o (2R) scores past Germany goalkeeper Roman Weidenfeller during their friendly match in preparation for the Fifa World Cup 2014 in Moenchengladbach, western Germany on Sunday AFP

SportDHAKA TRIBUNE14

Tuesday, June 3, 2014

Pressure mounts for new 2022 WC votePressure mounted Monday for FIFA to call a new vote on the 2022 World Cup hosts with Australia declaring that corruption accusations against contro-versial winners Qatar were a “serious development”. British government and football o� cials have also said a new vote should be held if accusations that a top Qatari o� cial made slush fund payments to secure support are proved. FIFA has not yet commented on reports by the Sunday Times news-paper that Mohamed bin Hammam, a former FIFA vice president from Qatar, paid more than $5 million to football o� cials around the world before the 2010 vote that awarded the 2022 con-test to the Gulf state. Qatar has strongly denied the allegations and vowed to “defend the integrity” of its bid.

–AFP

Liverpool complete Rickie Lambert signingLiverpool con� rmed Monday they have completed the transfer of England striker Rickie Lambert from Southampton. The former Reds trainee, underwent a med-ical on Saturday after a fee of £4million ($6.7 million, 4.9 million euros) was agreed with the Saints. He is understood to have signed a two-year contract. Lam-bert has emerged as an important squad player for England and is a member of the 23-man World Cup squad currently at a training camp in Miami ahead of the tournament in Brazil. “I can’t believe it. I’ve loved this club all my life. I left here 17 years ago -- and I haven’t stopped loving it since,” the 32-year-old said.

–AFP

Senanayake reported for suspect actionSri Lanka o� -spinner Sachithra Senan-ayake has been reported for a suspect bowling action following his side’s win over England in the fourth one-day international at Lord’s on Saturday, the International Cricket Council said on Monday. Senanayake, 29, was reported by the match o� cials after concerns were raised about a number of his deliveries. “Senanayake’s bowling action will now be scrutinised further under the ICC process relating to bowlers reported in tests, ODIs and T20Is,” the ICC said in a statement on its website. “The o� -spinner is required to undergo testing within 21 days, and, during this period, he is permitted to continue bowling in international cricket until the results of the testing are known.” Sena-nayake has played one test, 33 ODIs and 17 Twenty20 matches for Sri Lanka.

–Reuters

Bombing at Nigeria football match kills at least 40: policeA bombing at a football pitch in Nigeria’s restive northeast killed at least 40 people on Sunday in an area previously attacked by Boko Haram Islamists, a police o� cer and a nurse said. The blast hit the town of Mubi in Adamawa state, one of three in the northeast which has been under a state of emergency for more than a year as Nigeria’s military has tried to crush Boko Haram’s � ve-year extremist uprising. “There has been a bomb explosion at a football � eld this evening and so far more than 40 people have been killed,” said the o� cer in Mubi who requested anonymity.

–AFP

Tax-evading Hoeness starts jail termFormer Bayern Munich president Uli Hoeness began a 3-1/2-year jail sen-tence on Monday after being convicted in March of evading $40 million in taxes, German media reported on Mon-day. The state prosecutor in Munich declined to comment on the report and said there would be no o� cial con� r-mation. Daily Bild reported Hoeness was set to enter the Landsberg prison, a jail with some 420 inmates that hous-es murderers, drug-dealers, and sex o� enders. It is also where Adolf Hitler dictated his book “Mein Kampf” to Ru-dolf Hess while serving out a sentence for his failed 1923 beer hall putsch.“Hoeness goes to jail today,” read the headline on Bild’s online edition. “Ex-actly 81 days after his conviction.”

–Reuters

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DAY’S WATCH

WALTON-DHAKA TRIBUNE ICC WORLD T20 QUIZ

Prizes distributed among winnersn Sadia Akter Keya, a class VI student of Pagla High School was ecstatic to receive her Walton rice-cooker, the � fth price of the Walton-Dhaka Tribune ICC World T20 Quiz at the Tribune o� ce yesterday. Keya submitted almost hundred coupons and may be dreamed of a better award but luck saw her land the � fth prize.

However, Md. Jashimuddin of My-mensingh was savoring the moment as he won the 32” LED Walton television - the top award of the second phase of the two phase quiz program.

There were 20 prizes which were equally distributed in two phases with the LED television and an 8.5 CFT re-frigerator being the prime awards. The quiz was participated by a good num-ber of cricket lovers from across the country and like Jashimuddin, Yesmin Rahman of Chittagong, Iqbal Hossain of Madaripur and Agradev Rohit of Moulvi Bazar also won di� erent prizes.

Afsana Ahmed Moon, a master’s student from the department of law of Green University won a DVD - the 4th

prize. She was quick to express her ju-bilation. “I closely followed Dhaka Tri-bune and was hopeful of winning an award. I feel happy to see myself as a winner,” said Moon.

Humayun Kabir, the executive direc-tor of Walton thanked the prize winners for their passion towards sports. “ICC T20 World T20 was a great occasion and your presence and participation prove your passion for the game. Walton, as a local brand, has always supported country’s sports and will continue to do so. I also thank Dhaka Tribune for its ef-fort,” said Humayun Kabir.

Shahriar Karim, the executive ed-itor of Dhaka Tribune welcomed the winners and thanked the sponsors. “We have built a bridge with our read-ers through the support of Walton. Dhaka Tribune hopes both the readers and Walton will continue their support as Dhaka Tribune aspires to greater heights,” said Shahriar.

Dhaka Tribune’s managing editor Jahangir Hyder and senior manager (ad-vertising) Shahidan Khurshed were also present on the occasion. l

Ronaldo looks to avoid Ballon d’Or cursen When Portugal star Cristiano Ronaldo was awarded last year’s Ballon d’Or in recognition of his dazzling achieve-ments over the course of 2013 he nat-urally had plenty of reason to celebrate although one could forgive him for feeling apprehensive about his coun-try’s hopes at the World Cup in Brazil.

Portugal will go the tournament as dark horses heavily reliant on their captain and talisman Ronaldo, who will need to defy the odds if he is to avoid becoming another footnote in a cautionary tale.

Since the inception of the Ballon d’Or, conceived by France Football magazine in 1956 to recognise Europe, and then latterly, the world’s most outstanding player each year, of the 14 players in possession of the prize heading into a World Cup none have achieved ultimate success on the glob-al stage.

Granted the facts are skewed to an extent given only European players

were eligible for the prize prior to 1995, ruling out the likes of three-time World Cup winner Pele and Diego Maradona, who was central to Argentina’s 1986 triumph, but that still leaves some of the game’s most decorated players who have fallen short.

Take Barcelona star Lionel Messi, who won the � rst of his four consec-utive Ballon d’Or awards in 2009, for example.

An Argentina side with an embar-rassment of attacking riches breezed through to the quarter-� nals at the 2010 World Cup in South Africa despite Messi not contributing a single goal. However, when they needed him most he was unable to deliver as Maradona’s shellshocked Argentine team were ruthlessly torn apart by Germany 4-0 in the last eight.

That provided merely just the latest chapter of a World Cup campaign end-ing in disappointment for the world’s leading player, a story that dates back to 1957 Ballon d’Or recipient and Real Madrid legend Alfredo Di Stefano.

For Argentine-born Di Stefano, who acquired Spanish citizenship in time for the 1958 quali� ers despite previous-ly representing his homeland as well as Colombia, his adopted nation fell short in their quest to reach the � nals leav-ing one of the world’s greatest players to ultimately � nish his career without ever appearing at the World Cup.

The only other time the reigning European Footballer of the Year, as the award was also referred to prior to merging with the FIFA World Player of the Year accolade in 2010 to become the FIFA Ballon d’Or, didn’t appear at the global showcase was in 1978 when Danish striker Allan Simonsen, a Eu-ropean Cup � nalist with Borussia Mo-enchengladbach the previous year, saw his nation’s hopes dashed in qualifying.

However, there have been � ve teams featuring the reigning Ballon d’Or win-ner to reach the � nal.

Perhaps no player has come quite as close nor su� ered a fate so cruel as the one that befell Italy’s Roberto Baggio at USA ‘94. l

The winners of Walton Dhaka Tribune ICC World Twenty20 quiz contest pose for a photograph at the Dhaka Tribune o� ce yesterday MUMIT M

Ispi Inter School Football starts todayn Tribune Desk

With the Fifa World Cup 2014 in Brazil just a few days away, juvenile footballers of 16 schools will engage themselves in a six-a-side football tourna-ment named Ispi Soft Drinks Powder Inter School Football at the handball stadium today.

The four day tour-nament will conclude on June 6. l

Narinda Pragati win Cute Prem Handball n Narinda Pragati Boy’s Club clinched the title of the Cute Premier Handball League beating Menzis Krira Chakra by 46-23 goals at the handball stadium yesterday. The eventual champions led the � rst half 23-11.

Hardev Singh and Samser Singh, the Indian recruits scored 13 and 11 goals respectively for the champions. Robi-ul and Emon were the top scorers for Menzis with 8 and 5 goals.

Azad Rahman Khokon, a player of Narinda who started his career in 1988 retired from the game after the � nal.

Sports secretary Nur Mohammad distributed the prizes as the chief guest. Kazi Razivuddin Ahmed Chapal, the BOA treasurer and the director of Mousumi Industries, the producers of Cute cosmetics and toiletries was pres-ent as the special guest. l

Newly signed New York City striker David Villa poses for a photo INTERNET

Halep, Errani and Petkovic book quarter-� nal spotsn

Romania’s Simona Ha-lep, the fourth and high-est seed remaining in the French Open, quali-� ed for the Roland Gar-

ros quarter-� nals for the � rst time on Monday when she overcame America’s Sloane Stephens 6-4, 6-3.

The 22-year-old Halep can climb to third in the world if she reaches the � -nal on Saturday where she can become the � rst Romanian to win the title since Virginia Ruzici in 1978.

In the quarter-� nals, she will have to overcome the challenge or Russia’s 2009 French champion Svetlana Kuznetsova or 24th seed Lucie Safarova.

Sara Errani of Italy will face German Andrea Petkovic in the quarter-� nals after both players came through tough fourth round matches.

Tenth seed and 2012 � nalist Errani, needed 81 minutes to subdue former number one Jelena Jankovic in the � rst

set before booking her last eight spot in Paris for the third straight year 7-6 (7/5), 6-2. She was beaten in the semi-� nals last year by eventual champion Serena Williams 6-0, 6-1.

Petkovic, who failed to negotiate qualifying in Paris last year when she came into the tournament ranked 136 in the world, also had di� culties be-fore prevailing in three sets over Dutch quali� er Kiki Bertens.

The Bosnian-born Petkovic, who is now ranked 27 and had a personal high of nine in the world during her � nest season in 2011, has overcome a series of injuries to equal her best showing at a Grand Slam thanks to a 1-6, 6-2, 7-5 vic-tory. It’s her fourth appearance in the last eight of a major after reaching this stage in 2011 at Australia, Paris and the US Open.

Bertens, a former world number 41, was bidding to become the 10th quali� er to advance to the quarter-� nals in Paris and equal the best result from a player not going straight into the main draw. l

Regal Rafa sets up Ferrer clash in quartersn

Eight-time champion Rafael Nadal stormed into a French Open quarter-� nal clash against David Ferrer on Monday with rock star

Prince in the stands and King Juan Car-los on his mind.

World number one Nadal, who turns 28 on Tuesday, brushed aside out-classed Dusan Lajovic, the world 83 from Serbia, 6-1, 6-2, 6-1.

He was at his ruthless, e� cient best against Lajovic who claimed a paltry 15 points o� the champion’s serve.

Nadal holds a 21-6 advantage over Ferrer in their career meetings but it was his compatriot who won their most recent clash in the Monte Carlo quar-

ter-� nals in April.Ferrer reached his 10th successive

Grand Slam quarter-� nal with a 6-3, 6-3, 6-7 (5/7), 6-1 win over South Afri-ca’s Kevin Anderson.

Ferrer had beaten Anderson, who was hoping to be the � rst South Af-rican man in the last eight since Cli� Drysdale in 1967, at the same stage of the tournament last year.

Later Monday, seventh-seeded Andy Murray, a semi-� nalist in 2011, tackles Spanish 24th seed Fernando Verdasco.

Murray has a 9-1 career advantage over the 30-year-old left-hander al-though Verdasco gave the Briton a huge scare in the Wimbledon quarter-� nals last year.

Verdasco won the � rst two sets be-fore Murray rallied on his way to his historic title triumph in London. l

Villa becomes New York City FC’s � rst signingn Spanish World Cup striker David Villa has signed for New York City FC on a three-year deal, the Major League Soc-cer team said on Monday.

Villa, who helped Atletico Madrid win this season’s Spanish league title, will join the new club who will begin playing in the MLS in 2015.

The deal is arguably the biggest signing made by an MLS team since David Beckham joined LA Galaxy with the 32-year-old Villa a current world champion.

Villa is the � rst player signed by NY-CFC, who are jointly owned by English Premier League club Manchester City and baseball’s New York Yankees.

“This is a historic and exciting mo-ment for the City family and the build-ing of New York City Football Club,” said club chief executive Ferran Soriano.

“I know David really well; he is one of the best footballers in the world”. l

SportDHAKA TRIBUNE 15

16 Back PageDHAKA TRIBUNE Tuesday, June 3, 2014

Abed awarded Leo Tolstoy International Gold Medaln Tribune Report

Brac founder and chairperson Sir Fazle Hasan Abed has been awarded the Leo Tolstoy International Gold Medal by The Russian Children Foundation (RDF) on the occasion of International Children’s Day on Sunday, says a press release.

He received the award at Moscow’s historic Bolshoi Theatre after a Gala concert for orphan, disabled and disad-vantaged children where he was pres-ent as the Guest of Honour.

The award was bestowed upon Abed by RDF leader and noted writer Albert A Likhanov.

Upon receiving the award, Abed said: “I thank the Russian Children Founda-tion for the honour they have shown me and Brac. Brac has been focusing on empowering people and creating oppor-tunities through education for the last three decades. I have great appreciation towards the work of the foundation by which they are protecting countless un-derprivileged children in Russia.”

Every year, RDF awards this medal to an outstanding humanist who has made a signi� cant contribution to the education and care of children. Previ-ous awardees include Mother Teresa, Albert Sabin (inventor of the oral polio vaccine), and Swedish children’s writer Astrid Lindgren.

RDF, which is the country’s � rst public organisation for the protection of children, was formed in September 1991. It currently has 74 regional o� c-es actively working to provide social assistance for needy children in Russia in cooperation with public authorities, businesses and other community or-ganisations.

Brac, established in 1972, is a de-velopment organisation dedicated to alleviating poverty by empowering the poor, and helping to bring about posi-tive changes in their lives by creating opportunities for them.

So far its activities have touched lives of an estimated 135 million people all over the world. l

After salmonella, thrips hit vegetable exportAt least a hundred vegetable consignments to EU countries intercepted since Julyn Kamran Reza Chowdhury

Having already been caught secretly shipping salmonella infected betel leaf, Bangladesh’s $200m vegetable export is hit by a fresh blow after the Europe-an Union detected insects in kakrol and brinjal consignments.

Only in Ja nuary, the EU warned Bangladesh that if proper guidelines were not followed then it would dis-continue the import.

The EU member countries, one of the largest vegetable markets of Bang-ladesh, stopped more than a hundred shipments between July last year and May this year.

In May alone, the quarantine au-thorities in Britain, Germany, Italy and Sweden intercepted 35 vegetables con-signments from Bangladesh.

Last month, the quarantine section of the Plant Protection Wing of the Department of Agricultural Extension (DAE) of Bangladesh government, cer-ti� ed that several consignments of spine – locally known as kakrol– con-tained no pest.

However, the destination ports detected the presence of thrips, also known as thunder� ies, in kakrol, which are in high demand in EU countries.

According to a report that the Dha-ka Tribune has obtained, thrips were found in a total of 10 shipments.

The Plant Protection Wing has already asked the quarantine o� cial posted at the Dhaka airport to explain why thrips were found in exported vegetables de-spite having clearance certi� cates.

There are allegations that unscru-pulous businessmen bribe a section of

dishonest customs o� cials to get their infected vegetable lots shipped to the European countries.

Last year, EU prohibited the export of the highly demanded betel leaf from Bangladesh after detecting the pres-ence of salmonella, a bacteria known to cause stomach disorders.

“Initially we did not issue phytosan-itary certi� cate [guaranteeing safety] for kakrol. However, later we issued the certi� cate upon permission from the director [of the Plant Protection Wing]. Now we have stopped doing it,” Dhaka airport quarantine o� cer Latafat Hos-sain told the Dhaka Tribune.

He said many of the interceptions were results of dispatching the con-signments without phytosanitary cer-ti� cates.

He claimed that the Plant Protection

Wing has complained to the customs authorities several times that many of the customs o� cers were involved with the ill-practice because they have the � -nal say about the export of any item.

Monjurul Islam, an adviser to the Bangladesh Fruits, Vegetable and Allied Products Exporters Association, told the Dhaka Tribune: “Some unscrupulous traders have been harming our busi-ness... Unless we follow the EU guide-lines, our export may be hampered.”

Records show that importers have detected consignments of lemon with canker disease; butter� ies in mango; white � ies in spinach and jute leaf; and � ies in mint. Many of these lots had no phytosanitary certi� cate.

On January 22, Taposh Kanti Das, commercial counsellor of the Bangla-desh mission at the EU capital Brussels,

wrote to the commerce secretary of Bangladesh regarding the union’s an-ger about the secret export of betel leaf.

EU o� cials cautioned that unless the secret export of betel leaf was stopped, “they [EU] might have to in-itiate additional import ban on some other vegetables consigned from Bang-ladesh in the coming months.”

A ray of hopeHowever, on May 6, Taposh wrote again to the commerce secretary sug-gesting that the EU authorities might not extend the ban on betel leaf beyond July 31 if Bangladesh demonstrated that it could tackle Salmonella or check unauthorised exports.

The commerce ministry has already held discussions with the stakeholders to � nd ways to get the ban withdrawn. l

Anisul: Judiciary shouldn’t cross jurisdictionn UNB

Law Minister Anisul Huq yesterday said the judiciary should not take any such step that might create anarchy in the country’s judicial system.

The law minister, however, said the government welcomes the steps taken by the court on its own motion over public interest cases but the judiciary should not cross its judicial jurisdiction.

He made the remark while address-ing as the chief guest in the closing session of a seminar titled Australia and Bangladesh: Sharing Experiences in Protection of Human Rights at Brac Centre Inn.

Asked whether his comment came in light of the Narayanganj seven-mur-der issue, Anisul Huq said, “I’ve made the comment in general keeping everything in mind.”

Following the seven murders, Dr Kamal Hossain � led a writ petition and the court ordered the arrest of the then three RAB o� cials. Commenting on the National Human Rights Commis-sion (NHRC), the law minister said the institution is functioning independent-ly and the government is sincere to es-tablish human rights.

He also said the government does not interfere in the NHRC activities and the government always remains sincere to implement the recommen-dations made by the NHRC. l

Draft law approved to rein in foreign fundn Tribune Report

The government has drafted a law prohibiting receiving foreign contribu-tion for political parties, judges of the Supreme Court, parliament members, o� cials and employees of the govern-ment and semi-government organisa-tions and local government candidates.

The cabinet has given approval in principle to the draft of the Foreign Contributions (Voluntary Activities) Regulation Act 2014 on Monday.

The approval has come in the regular cabinet meeting held at the secretariat with Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina in the chair. Cabinet Secretary M Mushar-raf Hossain Bhuiyan told reporters after the meeting.

Musharraf said the drafted law stip-ulated the registration and renewal of the NGOs and it will ensure more trans-parency in receiving foreign contribu-tions by NGOs as well as their activities.

“The law has 22 sections. It clearly mentioned that no NGO can function be-fore registration with the NGO Bureau. In case an individual, registration will not be required, but approval is essential.”

In the application for registration, an organisation must clearly mention the source of the fund and areas of spending, he said.

The registration will be given for ten years, however the government can cancel the registration anytime in case of violation of the law.

Besides, without approval of the NGO Bureau, no NGO can take or imple-ment any project. An NGO can appoint a foreign expert or advisor taking secu-rity clearance from the home ministry.

The NGOs must maintain its accu-rate accounts and all foreign contribu-tions should be deposited in a single account in a bank.

Later, it could be transferred to the ac-count of the project. Statement of the ac-counts of the foreign contributions must be sent two times to Bangladesh Bank, NGO bureau and ERD, the law stated.

Any violation of the law would be considered as o� ense and punishment will be applicable depending on the na-ture of the o� ense, the law included.

Till last April, 2013, a total of 2303 NGOs were registered with NGO Bu-reau since its commencement in 1990. Out of those, 2070 NGOs are local and 233 are foreign, the cabinet secretary mentioned. Total amount of disburse-ment by these NGOs is about Tk 50,000 crore, he added. l

$500m World Cup boost for Bangladesh garment makersn AFP

Bangladesh garment manufacturers bagged at least $500 million in export orders to sew World Cup jerseys for fans across the globe in a major indus-try boost after a string of disasters, o� -cials said yesterday.

The acting head of the Bangladesh Knitwear Manufacturers and Export-ers Association (BKMEA) said the country’s shipment of garments grew around 14% this year with World Cup orders playing a key role.

BGMEA is a group of around 1,000 garment factories, which mostly make T-shirts.

“Some 100 of our factories got orders to make jerseys for World Cup fans. We do not have an accurate � gure of the total value of the World Cup related merchandise exports. But it will be be-tween $500-$1,000 million,” Moham-mad Hatem told AFP.

Hatem said Bangladesh's shipments of garments would hit a record $25 billion in the � scal year ending this month, up around three billion dollars than the previous year. “A big part of the growth came from the World Cup merchandise,” he said.

Hatem said the Bangladeshi plants supply clothing to the sportswear gi-ants like Puma and Adidas and made jerseys for fans of almost all the World Cup's 32 teams, thanks largely to its low-cost reputation.

Bangladesh is the world’s second largest clothing maker after China. The garment industry is the economic mainstay, making up 80 percent of the nation's annual exports and providing jobs to more than four million people.

“My factory alone made 250,000 World Cup jerseys for countries like Germany, France, Spain, Belgium, Italy and Portugal,” he said.

One of the Bangladeshi suppliers of Puma bagged orders of three million dollars to make jerseys for football sup-porters of Brazil, Argentina and Chile, the company's owner Rezaul Hasanat told AFP.

“If you take into account all the World Cup related merchandise that Bangladeshi factories have made this year, I won’ t be surprised if the � gure touches one billion dollars,” Hasanat, of Viyellatex Group, said.

Many factories made products like � ags and caps and did the shipments through small buying houses, whose � g-ures are not usually monitored by major garment trade groups like the BKMEA and the Bangladesh Garment Manufacturers and Exporters Association (BGMEA).

The orders came despite a series of disasters to hit the Bangladesh garment industry, including the Rana Plaza fac-tory collapse in April 2013, which left at least 1,138 people dead.

The World Cup kicks o� on June 12 in Sao Paulo, where 65,000 spectators to are expected for the opening fanfare that pits hosts and � ve-time champi-ons Brazil against Croatia. l

Sir Fazle Hasan Abed receiving the Leo Tolstoy International gold medal award from the The Russian Children’s Foundation’s leader and famous writer Albert  A Likhanov

Squatters with their belongings stand on road as Dhaka District Administration and BIWTA in a drive removed illegal structures on the bank of Buriganga River in Keraniganj of the city yesterday DHAKA TRIBUNE Govt approves

work order for Padma Bridgen UNB

The government has approved the work order for China Major Bridge En-gineering Co Ltd for construction of the much-talked-about Padma Multipur-pose Bridge involving Tk12,133 crore.

Communications Minister Obaidul Quader signed the noti� cation of award at his ministry yesterday.

While talking to reporters after sign-ing the noti� cation of award, Obaidul Quader said with the approval of the work order work on the much-hyped bridge will begin any time.

He said the work order was given fol-lowing the Cabinet Purchase Commit-tee’s approval of the Chinese company’s tender proposal for the construction of the Padma Multipurpose Bridge.

Stating that China Major Bridge En-gineering Co Ltd was the pre-quali� ed bidder of the World Bank, the minis-ter said the main work on the Padma Bridge will be done as per the design of the World Bank.

Replying to a query, he said the com-pany may begin their work from now on but before beginning of the work a contract will be signed very soon.

Responding to another question, Obaidul Quader said the work order has been given to the Chinese company main-taining all rules and regulations. “We hope the company will do their best.”

On May 22, the Cabinet Purchase Com-mittee approved the Chinese company’s tender proposal for the construction of the 6.15-km bridge, the biggest-ever in-frastructure project of the country.

As per terms and conditions of the contract, the contractor will have to complete the bridge construction work within 1,460 days (4 years) from the signing of the contract. The bridge’s longevity will be 100 years.

The Padma Bridge project has been a long standing issue for Bangladesh. The donor agencies, including the World Bank, Asian Development Bank and the JICA, promised a loan of $1.9 billion for the project. l

The World Cup kicks o� on June 12 in Sao Paulo, where 65,000 spectators to are expected for the opening fanfare that pits hosts and � ve-time champions Brazil against Croatia

Putul madeWHO advisern Emran Hossain Shaikh

Saima Wazed Hossain Putul, the daughter of Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina, has been drafted global autism advocate of World Health Organisation (WHO) into its ‘Expert Advisory Panel’ on mental health.

She is set to serve in the 25-member experts’ panel for four years.

Mahbubul Hoque Shakil, Prime min-ister's special assistant, con� rmed the news to the Dhaka Tribune.

He said: “Prime minister's daugh-ter Putul, who also advocates for New York-based Autism Speaks, has been drafted as one of the members of the 25-member Expert Advisory Panel on mental health of WHO.”

An expert advisory panel consists of experts from whom the organisation may obtain technical guidance and support within a particular subject, ei-ther by correspondence or at meetings to which the experts may be invited.

The panel members also convened by the director-general for the purpose of reviewing and making technical rec-ommendations on a subject of interest to the organisation.

Putul is the chair of the new national advisory committee on autism, meant to raise awareness of the developmen-tal disorder in Bangladesh and in South Asia. l

Editor: Zafar Sobhan, Published and Printed by Kazi Anis Ahmed on behalf of 2A Media Limited at Dainik Shakaler Khabar Publications Limited, 153/7, Tejgaon Industrial Area, Dhaka-1208. Editorial, News & Commercial O� ce: FR Tower, 8/C Panthapath, Shukrabad, Dhaka 1207. Phone: 9132093-94, Advertising: 9132155, Circulation: 9132282, Fax: News-9132192, e-mail: news@dhakatribune.com, info@dhakatribune.com, Website: www.dhakatribune.com

Steps for banks’ good governance likelyAMA Muhith may announce the steps in next � scal budgetn Asif Showkat Kallol

The next � scal year budget speech may include steps to establish good gover-nance in the country’s banking sector, said Finance Minister AMA Muhith.

In an interview with the Dhaka Tri-bune last week, he also said the gov-ernment will allocate fund in the � scal for the state-owned banks to convert their goodwill to capital.

The total fund is likely to be Tk5,000 crore as set by the development part-ners.

Muhith said the state banks have faced huge provision shortfall due to large credit scams in the recent years.

About the state-owned BASIC Bank, � nance minister thinks the man-agement of the bank “did a very bad thing.”

“We will take action against the cor-rupt o� cials, whoever they are, there will be political consideration.”

Besides, � nance minister alleged that the banks disclosed less pro� t than they actually made to dodge taxes.

During the interview, AMA Muhith answered to di� erent many other questions which include investment, social safety net, district budget, pen-sion schemes for private employees and reforms to monthly pay order of private educational institutions.

He hoped large amounts of foreign investment might come to the country in the upcoming � scal as some infra-structural bottlenecks have been re-moved.

He said social safety net would in-crease in the year.

Muhith di� ered with a present newspaper article of Dr Mirza Azizul Islam in which the former � nance ad-viser of last caretaker government al-leged such allocation was decreasing.

“It’s a bogus statement as we have been raising the amounts every year.”

Muhith also claimed that the coun-

try’s woman citizens always get max-imum bene� ts from the social safety net programmes.

As more six district budgets will be announced next � scal, they are expected to help the district adminis-trations implement local development projects more e� ciently.

“The district authorities will be able to make better plans as they will have

clearer knowledge of the projects,” ex-plained � nance minister.

The district administrations can also take new projects like education and � sheries sectors.

Muhith said he would bring reforms to the present MPO system in the next � scal year.

“Fund for MPO will not only be used for teachers, but also for improv-ing quality of education and construc-tion of educational institutions.”

Besides, Muhith said the govern-ment will introduce pension system for private sector setting a rule of thumb in a bid to safeguard the well-being of the retirees. A project will be taken in this regard, he said.

Muhith said the government will enhance earning from the value added tax as earning from the customs de-clines due to relaxation of import poli-cy under the WTO rules.

“If the government makes the VAT system popular among businessmen, it will reduce the tax evasions.”

About gross domestic product, Muhith believes the growth that has remained hovering around 6% will be better if the administration is decen-tralised.

“If the local economic authority is given to the local government, there will be more contribution to the coun-try’s GDP.”

He reiterated that there will be no chance of of whitening black money but the money can be legalised paying 10% tax as per law. l

www.dhakatribune.com/business TUESDAY, JUNE 3, 2014

B3 China accelerates as euro zone stumbles

B4 Solar plane makes debut with eye on global trip

ADB to invest $1bn every yearn Tribune Report

Asian Development Bank (ADB) has promised to invest at least $1bn in Bangla-desh every year mainly for infrastructure development, Planning Minister AHM Mustafa Kamal said in Dhaka yesterday.

“This year ADB will invest $642m and this � gure might increase to $1bn,” he said, after a meeting with ADB’s new country director for Bangladesh

Kazuhiko Higuchi.Higuchi said Bangladesh is close to

become a middle-income country, as it has success story in many areas, includ-ing export-import business, removing gender disparity, human resource de-velopment and social development.

“Foreign investors have been show-ing keen interest to invest in Bangla-desh,” he said.

ADB has so far invested in 58 proj-

ects worth $15.8bn in Bangladesh in the � eld of � ood management, power generation, improving rail line connec-tivity, improving irrigation system, risk management and human resource de-velopment, according to the ADB’s new country director.

“Investment will increase in Ban-gladesh from next year as ADB always wants to remain as a development partner of the country,” he added. l

JS watchdog for BTCL and Teletalk merger n Muhammad Zahidul Islam

Parliamentary standing committee on Posts, Telecommunication and Infor-mation Technology ministry yesterday discussed about merger of two state-owned telecommunication companies – Teletalk and Bangladesh Telecom-munications Company Limited.

“A committee member placed the issue, but no formal recommendation was made,” Imran Ahmad, Chairman of the committee, told the Dhaka Tri-bune after the meeting at Jatiyo Sang-sad Bhaban.

It, however, proposed to rethink the o� er and invited a formal proposal.

Meeting sources said committee member Mouazzam Hossain Ratan, a former sta� of BTCL, placed the issue at the meeting and said: “Both the companies are owned by the govern-ment, then why we allow double ex-penses for them? We can merge them and they can become a stronger con-tributor.”

Earlier, the watchdog during the last parliament made same recom-mendation, when present Information Minister Hasanul Haque Inu was the chairman of the committee.

Meeting sources said the committee members also expressed their dissatis-faction over Teletalk’s service as they said the lone government owned mo-bile phone operator could not create any impact on the market and the net-work is irritating.

Posts, Telecommunication and In-formation Technology Minister Abdul Latif Siddique said the secretary of the ministry became the chairman of Tele-talk, BTCL or other companies under the ministry, which is not logical.

Committee members also observed that it was a wrong decision to sep-arate Teletalk from the then Bangla-desh Telegraph and Telephone Board (BTTB).

Teletalk currently have around 33 lakh subscribers while BTCL have around 9 lakh. l

Planning minister defends o� cial FY14 GDP estimate as CPD raises questionn Tribune Report

Planning Minister AHM Mustafa Kamal has defended the GDP growth recent-ly estimated by Bangladesh Bureau of Statistics (BBS) for the outgoing � scal year as he criticised Centre for Policy Dialogue (CPD) for its analysis on as-sumption and incomplete data.

“CPD has no complete data. It comes up with analysis on assumption. In many cases, this might be correct or not,” said the minister, in response to a question while brie� ng on outcome

of the meeting with ADB’s new country director for Bangladesh Kazuhiko Hi-guchi in Dhaka yesterday.

His reaction came a day after the local think tank CPD raising questions about the 6.12% economic growth pro-jected by BBS (Bangladesh Bureau of Statistics) for the outgoing � scal year.

He said it is BBS not CPD that has complete data on GDP. Highlighting some statistics that keep contribution in the GDP growth, Kamal hoped CPD’s confusion will be removed after ana

B3 COLUMN 3

BB allows agent banking in rural areas n Tribune Report

Bangladesh Bank has allowed conducting agent banking activities in the rural areas, including municipalities, as it lifted the restriction yesterday.

The restriction imposed on March 24 this year is still applicable in met-ropolitan or city corporation areas, ac-cording to a circular.

Only sharia-based banks could provide islami banking services at the agent banking levels. Agent money will be brought under insur-ance coverage.

Every agent will have a current ac-count with respective bank to conduct the agent banking activities. The high-est status limit of the account will be Tk10 lakh.

Clients are allowed to deposit or withdraw highest Tk25,000 in each transaction (cash withdraw or cash de-posit) and two times per day. But the limit will not be applicable in case of remittance withdrawal. l

Remittance continues to fall as manpower export dropsn Tribune Report

Remittance in� ow continued to fall for second consecutive month in May as re� ected in Bangladesh Bank data re-leased yesterday.

Bankers said the fall is due to de-cline in manpower export to Middle East – a market from which Bangladesh receives highest remittance.

The country received US$1.20bn of remittance in May, marking a decline from the previous month’s $1.23bn. The remittance had dropped by 4.3% in April from $1.27bn in March.

The remittance, however, rose 10.57% in May compared to $1bn in the same month last year.

The major recruiting countries of Bangladeshi workers in the Middle East are now interested in “only skilled fe-male workers” instead of male ones, said a senior executive of Bangladesh Manpower Export and Training (BMET).

The decline of manpower export in the Middle East pulled down the remit-tance in� ow, he said.

The total remittance in� ow in 11 months (July to May) of the current � s-cal year decreased by around 3.5% to $12.92bn compared to $13.40bn in the same period of the previous � scal year.

Remittance in� ows from the Mid-dle Eastern countries dropped by 12% in the last 10 months (July to April) of the current � scal year due to the fall in manpower export and the political un-rest over January 5 polls, bankers said.

The country received $6.92bn in remittance during July to April period of 2013-14 compared to $7.87bn in the same period last � scal year.

Of the remittance received in May, $371.13m came through state-owned commercial banks, $15.32m through specialised banks, $801.61m through private commercial banks and $14.11m through foreign commercial banks.

Overseas employment decreased by 10.73% in January-March period, ac-cording to the statistics of BMET.

A total of 96,068 workers went abroad with jobs from January to March of the current year against

1,07,626 people during the same pe-riod last year, showing a decline of 11,567 overseas employment in three months.

BMET also recorded that about four lakh workers, including male and fe-male, got overseas jobs from January to December in 2013 against over six lakh workers in 2012.

Of the Middle Eastern countries, remittance in� ow from Kingdom of Saudi Arab decreased to $2.58bn in July to April period of the current � scal year compared to $3.35bn in the same period of the last � scal year, followed by UAE $2.21bn compared to $2.41bn, Qatar $210m compared to $247m and Oman $564m compared to $511m.

Of the Western countries, remit-tance in� ow from USA increased by 24% to $1.91bn in the � rst 10 months of the current � scal year compared to $1.54bn in the same period of the last � scal year while the country receiving $757.80m remittance from the Unit-ed Kingdom (UK) in the same period, which is 12% down from $851.26m. l

New IMF credit under plan ‘to keep Taka stable’n Asif Showkat Kallol

The government plans to sign anoth-er loan deal with International Mone-tary Fund after the end of the current Extended Credit Facility fund instal-ments, which aims to maintain strong local currency against US dollar.

All seven instalments under the ECF will be paid by middle of next year.

Finance Minister AMA Muhith ad-mitted such plan while talking to the Dhaka Tribune during his last week tour of his home city Sylhet.

“We are looking for another cred-it from the IMF once ECF loan pro-gramme completes in mid-2015,” he said.

Another loan plan comes amid fear that the local currency might face trou-ble as big amounts of the greenback

would be used for Padma bridge con-struction in next couple of years.

Over the last several months, the local currency has remained stable be-ing driven by the greenback purchase from the local market, said a � nance ministry o� cial who deals with cash and debt management.

But local currency and balance of payment might weaken due to the use of US dollar in great deal during Padma bridge construction.

“To avoid devaluation of Taka, the country needs another exchange rate support after the end of the ECFinstalment payments,” the o� cial said.

In its latest report on Bangladesh Economy 2014, Center for Policy Dia-logue stressed that Bangladesh Bank would need to carefully examine the likely pressure on foreign exchange to

maintain stability as implementation of mega projects are ahead.

According to Bangladesh Bank data, US dollar is now traded for Tk77.63 compared to Tk81.90 in 2012, which exposed the current strength of the dollar.

IMF approved $987m loan toBangladesh in April, 2012 under the ECF programme to help thecountry overcome its macroeconomic pressures.

The global lender has already pro-vided four of seven instalments of the fund. Finance Minister said � fth instal-ment of $141m has been approved by the IMF board on Friday.

The remaining two instalments are expected to be given without delay.

“Our macroeconomic status was good and stable in last last � ve years

despite political turmoil. We hope the last two ECF instalments will arrive by the stipulated time,” Muhith said.

The ECF currently car-ries zero rate of interest and the loan is to be repaid within 10 years.

Meanwhile, the coun-try’s foreign exchange re-serves exceeded $20bn in April from $19.29bn in March. Bangladesh got the IMF credit support after a period of long nine years.

The ECF provides a higher level of access to � -nancing, more concessional terms, enhanced � exibility in programme design and more focused and stream-lined conditionality. l

WTO DG arrives todayn Tribune Report

World Trade Organisation Director General Roberto Azevedo arrives in Dhaka today on a two-day visit to Ban-gladesh to discuss implementation of the Bali Package with the government of Bangladesh.

It will be the second visit by any WTO director general in two years as former DG Pascal Lamy visited Dhaka in 2012.

Azevedo is scheduled to hold a meeting with Commerce Minister To-fail Ahmed at his o� ce at Bangladesh Secretariat at 3pm today, according to a commerce ministry. He is also sched-uled to visit to Square Pharmaceuticals and Beximco Textile Mill in Gazipur to-morrow morning.

The visit at the invitation of Bangla-desh is important as the country would raise the issues of implementation of the package adopted after hectic ne-gotiation at the ninth ministerial con-ference of WTO in Bali, Indonesia in December last year.

The agreement allows the least de-veloped countries like Bangladesh to get duty-free quota-free market access in an expanded manner.

There are some countries which have not yet provided duty-free mar-ket access completely to the LDCs and the Bali Package urged them to expand the coverage before the next WTO min-isterial meeting.

Bangladesh enjoys duty-free mar-ket access to European Union, Canada, Australia, Japan and some other

B3 COLUMN 6

Tax-free income limit not for long termn Tribune Report

Finance Minister AMA Muhith has changed his previous stance about setting a long-term tax-free income ceiling, saying such step will not be “acceptable.”

Muhith earlier hinted that the tax-free individual income limit would be � xed for a 10-year term citing the ex-ample of the United States.

“Continuation of a certain tax-free ceiling for several years is not accept-able. So, we are not going to announce any such thing in the upcoming bud-get,” � nance minister told the Dhaka Tribune.

Currently, the tax-free income limit for individual taxpayers is Tk2.20 lakh. Muhith already announced it would not be changed for the next � scal year.

At the consultative committee meeting of National Board of Revenue held recently, � nance minister asserted: “The minimum limit for tax-free income is set for 10 years in the USA. We will also � x a fresh ceiling after discussion with Prime Minister which will remain unchanged in next 10 years.”

Meanwhile, � nance ministry of-� cials also said the tax-free ceiling would not be changed at Tk2.20 lakh in the coming � scal.

They, however, said the tax-free ceiling for female and senior citizens aged over 65 years will be increased from existing Tk250,000 to Tk275,000 and for physically challenged taxpay-ers from Tk300,000 to Tk350,000. The tax-free limit for freedom � ghters will be set at Tk4 lakh.

Earlier, Federation of Bangladesh Chambers of Commerce and Industry (FBCCI) proposed to raise the tax-free income threshold for individuals to Tk2.5 lakh in consistence with the in-creased living cost.

FBCCI cited that there was over 7% in� ation rate in the current � scal year. So, the tax-free income limit is not consistent with the in� ation rate and living cost of marginal taxpayers, it said urging the government to re-� x the ceiling. l

ANALYST

B2 Stock Tuesday, June 3, 2014DHAKA TRIBUNE

Stocks end � at with volatility n Tribune Report

Stocks ended � at in volatile trade yesterday, as late pro� t booking mainly on large cap issues cut early gains.

The benchmark index DSEX inched down 1 points to close at 4,447, hitting highest 4,485 in the mid-session. It gained 18 points in the previous session.

The blue chips DS30 gained 12 points or 0.8% to 1,007. The Shari-ah index DSES rose 4 points or 0.4% to 1,007.

Chittagong Stock Exchange (CSE) Selective Categories Index, CSCX, was up 19 points to settle at 8,486.

Participation in trading in-creased as the total turnover at DSE crossed Tk400 crore mark af-ter four sluggish weeks. It stood at Tk432 crore, which was 15% higher over the previous session.

After witnessing several dull sessions, multinational companies have staged comeback strongly.

Signi� cant strength was also vis-ible in pharmaceuticals, telecom-munication and food and allied stocks, which rallied 2.8%, 2.2% and 1.6% in market capitalisation respectively.

All other major sectors edged higher except the � nancial sectors – banks and non-banking � nancial in-stitutions that declined marginally.

Share price of Wata Chemicals that was brought back to the main market from the OTC market re-cently jumped over 8% following its corporate declaration of 30% stock dividend.

IDLC Investments said in ab-sence of any directional movement, investors were in sell-o� mode in large number of scrips.

On the other hand, it said, as the deposit rates of the banks and � nancial institutions were com-ing down, it was much expected that the investable fund may � ow to capital market investment on a risk-adjusted basis.

Market level overvaluation was not permitting much room for capi-tal market investment, it said, add-ing that amid such situation, a large number of stakeholders kept their attention to the upcoming national budget.

Lanka Bangla Securuties said positive sentiment was also generated by news that following relaxation of capital market re-� nancing fund, merchant banks and brokerage houses have shown interest for fund disbursement and ICB will apply for installment of next Tk600 crore re-� nancing scheme.

Losers, however, took a strong lead over the gainers as out of 297 issues traded, 190 declined, 80 ad-vanced and 27 closed unchanged. l

News from trade serverWATACHEM: The Board of Directors has recommended 30% stock dividend for the year ended on December 31, 2013. Date of AGM: 27.06.2014, Time: 11:00 AM, Venue: Factory Premises at Murapara, Rupgonj, Narayangonj. Record Date: 11.06.2014. The Company has also reported net pro� t after tax of Tk. 29.78 million, EPS of Tk. 6.13, NAV per share of Tk. 119.82 and NOCFPS of Tk. 10.99 for the year ended on December 31, 2013 as against Tk. 20.00 million, Tk. 4.12 (restated), Tk. 110.86 (restated) and Tk. 0.63 (restated) respectively for the year ended on Decem-ber 31, 2012.AFCAGRO: National Credit Ratings Limited (NCR) has announced the rating of the Company as "A" in the long term and "ST-2" in the short term based on audited � nancial statements of the Company up to December 31, 2013.GRAMEEN1: Grameen Fund, the Trustee of Grameen Mutual Fund One, is pleased to call an Unit holders' meeting on June 26, 2014 at 11:00 AM at Samarai Convention Center, 23/G/7 Panthopath, Dhaka to discuss and vote on the options

of Liquidation/Redemption, Extension or Conversion of the Fund on maturity as per SEC (Mutual Fund Rules) 2001 and other related matters. The current tenure of the fund is due to mature on June 30, 2015 i.e. one year from now. The Record Date is on June 11, 2014 to participate in the meeting and receive the necessary documents in this regard.INTECH: (Basis for Quali� ed Opinion): The auditor of the company has given the following Basis for Quali� ed Opinion in the audit report of the company for the year ended on 31 December 2013: "Basis for Quali� ed Opinion" 1.0 The company has recognised "revenue from operations" amounting to Tk. 33,642,462 which represents revenue from related parties as in Note-2.13. No amount was recovered from Trade Receivables so cre-ated. The balance of Trade Receivables stood at Tk. 69,593,867 as on 31 De-cember 2013 as against Tk. 29,850,334 as on 31 December 2012. Therefore, the capability to run the company as going concern is dependent on realization of these Trade Receivables. 2.0 The compa-

ny does not maintain Bene� ciaries Pro� t Participation Fund by set a siding net pro� t year to year as required by Labour Laws of the country. 3.0 The closing bal-ance of cash in hand was Tk. 4,538,053 as on 31 December 2013, which appears to be abnormally high. We were not pro-vided with any cash custody certi� cate by the management. 4.0 We could not verify quantity, quality and existence of inventory of Tk. 5,524,500 as on 31 December 2013. The provisions for BAS-2 (Inventories) have not been followed for valuation of inventory.TAKAFULINS: The Company has informed that Mr. Md. Abul Hashem has been elected as the Chairman and Mr. Md. Mo� z Uddin as Vice Chairman of the Company for the next term.Primary Status of IPO: Tung Hai Knitting and Dyeing Limited: All concerned are hereby informed that the primary status of the IPO of Tung Hai Knitting and Dyeing Limited: Total amount of subscription (excluding NRB) is Tk.8,335,829,975. Total amount received from NRB is Tk. 30,659,056 up to 22 May 2014.

CSE LOSERS

Company Closing (% change)

Aver-age (%

change)

Closing average Closing Daily high Daily low Turnover

in millionLatest

EPSLatest

PE

Sonargaon Tex -Z -10.00 -10.00 8.10 8.10 8.10 8.10 0.008 -0.92 -veGrameen M F One-A -7.61 -4.76 42.40 41.30 44.00 41.30 1.124 3.40 12.5Sa� o Spinning-A -7.17 -7.22 20.68 20.70 20.70 20.60 0.041 1.08 19.1AIMS First -A -6.67 -5.92 38.12 37.80 40.40 37.60 1.601 5.00 7.6Bay Leasing.-A -5.73 -5.49 24.98 24.70 25.50 24.10 0.164 1.44 17.3ICB AMCL IslamicMF-A -5.71 -5.71 19.80 19.80 19.80 19.80 0.020 2.33 8.5Samorita Hospital -A -5.26 -4.26 90.00 90.00 90.00 90.00 0.090 2.20 40.9Delta SpinnersA -4.50 -3.30 19.33 19.10 20.20 18.80 0.963 0.55 35.1Familytex (BD) Ltd.-A -3.98 -4.82 24.47 24.10 25.30 23.90 7.316 4.64 5.3S. Alam CR Steel -A -3.75 -3.80 33.94 33.40 34.50 33.20 1.239 1.90 17.9

DSE LOSERS

Company Closing (% change)

Aver-age (%

change)

Closing average Closing Daily high Daily low Turnover

in millionLatest

EPSLatest

PE

EBL NRB M.F.-A -10.00 -10.00 6.30 6.30 6.30 6.30 0.006 0.47 13.48th ICB M F-A -7.91 -8.01 66.50 66.40 68.00 65.30 0.399 7.96 8.4Eastern Lubricants -A -6.02 -3.55 505.12 496.70 521.00 489.00 3.056 6.95 72.7AIMS First -A -6.00 -4.67 38.39 37.60 40.20 37.00 11.858 5.00 7.7Prime Bank 1st MF-A -5.88 -4.44 4.95 4.80 5.20 4.80 1.558 0.73 6.8Grameen M F One-A -5.52 -4.14 41.87 41.10 43.90 40.80 20.494 3.40 12.3ICB AMCL IslamicMF-A -5.45 -4.95 19.20 19.10 19.50 18.90 0.480 2.33 8.2Shampur Sugar -Z -5.41 -4.59 7.06 7.00 7.30 7.00 0.036 -61.36 -veBay Leasing.-A -5.41 -5.11 24.88 24.50 25.80 23.60 4.531 1.44 17.3Global Insurance -A -5.39 -4.81 22.95 22.80 24.10 22.00 1.287 2.96 7.8

CSE TURNOVER LEADERS

Company Volume shares

Value in million

% of total turnover

Daily closing

Price change

Daily opening

Daily high

Daily low

Daily average

Meghna Petroleum -A 1,524,887 427.02 39.42 284.20 2.08 278.40 285.50 278.00 280.04Square Pharma -A 1,035,802 282.91 26.11 278.50 3.45 269.20 279.90 271.00 273.13Bata Shoe Ltd. -A 150,600 153.62 14.18 1036.20 2.19 1014.00 1007.00 1020.06Grameenphone-A 98,800 27.89 2.57 281.40 2.07 275.70 285.50 278.00 282.27LafargeS Cement-Z 167,000 13.48 1.24 80.40 -2.31 82.30 83.00 80.00 80.70BD Submarine Cable-A 61,215 11.45 1.06 186.10 1.69 183.00 189.40 185.00 187.02Delta Life Insu. -A 37,500 7.81 0.72 205.80 1.93 201.90 214.00 203.00 208.38Familytex (BD) Ltd.-A 299,000 7.32 0.68 24.10 -3.98 25.10 25.30 23.90 24.47UNITED AIR-A 615,260 6.82 0.63 11.00 -0.90 11.10 11.30 10.90 11.08BSRM Steels-A 78,710 6.08 0.56 76.40 -2.43 78.30 79.00 76.10 77.21Padma Oil Co. -A 18,339 6.02 0.56 332.90 2.68 324.20 333.90 324.80 328.34Hwa Well Textiles-N 122,500 4.93 0.46 40.70 0.00 40.70 41.00 39.50 40.26Appollo Ispat CL -N 182,000 4.91 0.45 26.80 -2.19 27.40 27.50 26.80 27.00HeidelbergCement -A 8,700 4.55 0.42 527.10 0.75 523.20 532.00 519.10 522.96National Bank - B 390,235 4.27 0.39 10.90 0.93 10.80 11.50 9.80 10.95

DSE TURNOVER LEADERS

Company Volume shares

Value in million

% of total turnover

Daily closing

Price change

Daily opening

Daily high

Daily low

Daily average

Grameenphone-A 1,730,986 489.48 11.32 281.70 2.29 275.40 290.00 265.00 282.78Meghna Petroleum -A 985,174 277.32 6.41 282.90 1.65 278.30 285.90 260.00 281.50GlaxoSK (BD) -A 153,100 267.22 6.18 1768.00 1.29 1745.40 1784.90 1740.00 1745.38Square Pharma -A 733,652 202.77 4.69 277.30 3.05 269.10 280.00 260.00 276.39LafargeS Cement-Z 2,083,500 168.15 3.89 80.30 -2.31 82.20 82.80 79.80 80.71Wata Chemicals -A 303,430 119.47 2.76 487.10 714.55 59.80 515.00 160.00 393.74Mercantile Bank -A 6,094,327 114.88 2.66 18.80 2.17 18.40 19.00 16.60 18.85Delta Life Insu. -A 482,650 100.77 2.33 205.60 2.49 200.60 215.00 203.00 208.79HeidelbergCement -A 183,650 96.24 2.23 528.30 1.71 519.40 533.90 508.00 524.03BSRM Steels-A 1,071,875 82.49 1.91 76.30 -2.55 78.30 81.00 73.00 76.96Olympic Ind. -A 345,320 81.04 1.87 234.60 0.17 234.20 236.40 221.00 234.68BD Submarine Cable-A 421,794 78.90 1.82 185.70 1.36 183.20 189.40 165.80 187.06Padma Oil Co. -A 232,026 76.47 1.77 333.60 3.25 323.10 335.00 303.00 329.57Familytex (BD) Ltd.-A 2,710,000 66.05 1.53 23.90 -4.78 25.10 25.40 23.70 24.37Active Fine Chem.-A 895,997 62.15 1.44 68.90 2.23 67.40 70.50 65.00 69.37

CSE GAINERS

Company Closing (% change)

Aver-age (%

change)

Closing average Closing Daily high Daily low Turnover

in millionLatest

EPSLatest

PE

Wata Chemicals -A 164.93 225.54 436.22 355.00 500.00 350.00 0.785 9.80 44.5Rangpur Foundry -A 8.60 8.61 106.11 106.10 107.40 104.90 0.584 3.08 34.5EXIM Bank 1 MF-A 7.14 4.71 7.33 7.50 7.50 7.00 0.011 0.71 10.3Meghna Life Ins. -A 7.12 7.12 123.30 123.30 123.30 123.30 0.086 6.45 19.1Padma Islami Life*-N 6.87 5.74 66.14 66.90 66.90 65.50 0.102 1.10 60.1BDCOM Online-A 5.71 5.71 22.20 22.20 22.20 22.20 0.022 1.43 15.5Marico BD Ltd-A 5.69 5.69 1162.57 1162.60 1168.70 1150.00 0.349 43.99 26.4GreenDeltaInsu -A 5.40 11.77 84.39 87.90 87.90 77.00 0.025 3.00 28.1H.R. Textile -A 5.26 5.26 30.00 30.00 30.00 30.00 0.060 1.62 18.5Apex Tannery -A 3.78 4.23 154.46 153.80 157.20 150.60 2.301 4.35 35.5

DSE GAINERS

Company Closing (% change)

Aver-age (%

change)

Closing average Closing Daily high Daily low Turnover

in millionLatest

EPSLatest

PE

Wata Chemicals -A 714.55 558.43 393.74 487.10 515.00 160.00 119.474 9.80 40.2ICB Islamic Bank-Z 10.00 14.64 5.48 5.50 5.50 5.30 2.326 -1.12 -veAl-Haj Textile -A 9.76 5.26 134.61 138.30 138.60 115.00 56.036 2.00 67.3Ambee Pharma -A 7.99 2.95 342.74 359.70 361.00 326.00 25.414 3.20 107.1Reckitt Benckiser -A 6.17 6.74 1,154.00 1,159.70 1,160.10 1,136.90 1.731 41.12 28.1Stylecraft -A 6.08 5.85 1,130.00 1,131.60 1,133.30 1,130.00 0.226 47.83 23.6Desh Garments -B 5.20 3.08 114.78 117.30 118.40 112.00 19.192 0.96 119.6Midas Financing-Z 5.11 4.23 18.50 18.50 18.50 18.50 0.056 -6.91 -veProgressive Life-A 4.48 4.32 123.53 123.60 129.00 117.50 1.270 2.30 53.7Rahim Textile -A 4.17 2.07 324.07 329.40 335.00 317.10 3.826 11.16 29.0

SECTORAL TURNOVER SUMMARY

Sector DSE CSE TotalMillion Taka % change Million Taka % change Million Taka % change

Bank 334.43 7.73 21.03 1.88 355.46 6.53NBFI 66.01 1.53 6.94 0.62 72.95 1.34Investment 78.87 1.82 5.01 0.45 83.88 1.54Engineering 372.96 8.62 28.10 2.52 401.06 7.37Food & Allied 226.62 5.24 10.19 0.91 236.81 4.35Fuel & Power 558.77 12.92 445.86 39.95 1004.63 18.46Jute 3.26 0.08 0.00 3.26 0.06Textile 360.21 8.33 28.19 2.53 388.41 7.14Pharma & Chemical 986.10 22.80 303.37 27.19 1289.47 23.70Paper & Packaging 0.37 0.01 9.35 0.84 9.72 0.18Service 50.45 1.17 1.24 0.11 51.69 0.95Leather 66.21 1.53 165.83 14.86 232.04 4.26Ceramic 8.96 0.21 0.88 0.08 9.84 0.18Cement 323.62 7.48 21.79 1.95 345.40 6.35Information Technology 18.29 0.42 2.17 0.19 20.47 0.38General Insurance 44.93 1.04 0.51 0.05 45.45 0.84Life Insurance 151.56 3.50 8.74 0.78 160.29 2.95Telecom 568.38 13.14 39.34 3.53 607.72 11.17Travel & Leisure 51.79 1.20 9.31 0.83 61.10 1.12Miscellaneous 52.92 1.22 8.04 0.72 60.96 1.12Debenture 0.29 0.01 0.02 0.00 0.31 0.01

Daily capital market highlights

DSE Broad Index : 4447.45974 (-) 0.03% ▼

DSE Shariah Index : 1007.01149 (+) 0.38% ▲

DSE - 30 Index : 1638.46595 (+) 0.76% ▲

CSE All Share Index: 13706.96390 (+) 0.09% ▲

CSE - 30 Index : 11257.29290 (+) 0.87% ▲

CSE Selected Index : 8486.93510 (+) 0.22% ▲

DSE key features June 2, 2014Turnover (Million Taka)

4,324.98

Turnover (Volume)

70,595,615

Number of Contract 83,532

Traded Issues 297

Issue Gain (Avg. Price Basis)

88

Issue Loss (Avg. Price Basis)

205

Unchanged Issue (Avg. Price Basis)

4

Market Capital Equity (Billion. Tk.)

2,305.45

Market Capital Equity (Billion US$)

27.94

CSE key features June 2, 2014Turnover (Million Taka) 1,088.00

Turnover (Volume) 8,419,105

Number of Contract 9,657

Traded Issues 217

Issue Gain (Avg. Price Basis)

69

Issue Loss (Avg. Price Basis)

141

Unchanged Issue (Avg. Price Basis)

6

Market Capital Equity (Billion. Tk.)

2,201.18

Market Capital Equity (Billion US$)

26.68

Prepared exclusively for Dhaka Tribune by Business Information Automation Service Line (BIASL), on the basis of information collected from daily stock quotations and audited reports of the listed companies. High level of caution has been taken to collect and present the above information and data. The publisher will not take any responsibility if any body uses this information and data for his/her investment decision. For any query please email to biasl@bol-online.com or call 01552153562 or go to www.biasl.net

All other major sectors edged higher except the � nancial sectors – banks and non-banking � nancial institutions that declined marginally

B3BusinessDHAKA TRIBUNE Tuesday, June 3, 2014

China accelerates as euro zone stumblesn Reuters

Signs of an economic revival in China have raised hopes that Beijing’s target-ed measures to bolster growth are hav-ing an impact but a slowdown in the euro zone will increase expectations of policy easing there.

Chinese factory activity expanded at the fastest pace in � ve months in May but euro zone manufacturing growth slowed more than initially thought, fu-elling expectations that the European Central Bank will ease policy this week.

“The Chinese numbers were fraction-ally higher. We are beginning to make some progress but it is consistent with this story that the Chinese economy is not going to grow as fast as it has in the past,” said Peter Dixon at Commerzbank.

“The European numbers were in and around the ballpark. It’s not the kind of data the ECB is going to react to instant-ly but it is part of a bigger puzzle that says we need more growth in Europe.”

US manufacturing growth probably accelerated in May, a report from the Institute for Supply Management (ISM) is expected to show later on Monday.

Markit’s � nal Manufacturing Pur-chasing Managers’ Index (PMI) for the euro zone slipped to a six-month low of 52.2 in May from April’s 53.4 as strong � gures from Germany failed to o� set a contraction in activity in France.

The � nal number was below the ini-tial reading of 52.5 but held above the 50 mark that separates growth from contraction for the 11th straight month. A subindex measuring output sank to 54.3 from 56.5, weaker than the initial reading of 54.7.

“The slowdown in euro zone manu-facturing activity in May reinforces be-lief that the ECB will deliver a package of measures at its 5 June policy meeting,” said Howard Archer at IHS Global Insight.

To spur growth, boost lending and drive up in� ation the ECB is widely ex-pected to cut its deposit rate to below zero, reduce its main borrowing rate and launch a re� nancing operation aimed at businesses when it meets on Thursday.

In� ation in the 18 nations using the euro is predicted to have held steady at just 0.7% in May, well within the ECB’s “danger zone” of below 1% and also be-low its preferred 2% ceiling.

A key measure of German in� ation, due later on Monday, is expected to have fallen in May.

Germany is Europe’s largest econ-omy and again supported the tepid overall growth but in France, the bloc’s second-largest, the PMI sank back be-low the 50 mark after just two months of expansion.

In non-euro using Britain manu-facturing activity kept expanding at a rapid pace in May, suggesting the economic recovery has lost little of its shine this quarter.

The reassuring Chinese factory data and another record high for Wall Street

lifted world stocks and commodities on Monday, although markets are wait-ing to see how far the ECB will go with policy easing plans.

Stronger china China’s o� cial PMI, which is geared to-wards bigger, state-owned � rms, rose to 50.8 in May, from April’s 50.4, the Na-tional Bureau of Statistics said on Sun-day, beating market expectations of 50.6.

“Recent pro-growth measures, which were stepped-up further last Friday, may have lent a helping hand here,” said Nikolaus Keis at UniCredit.

China’s manufacturing data bol-

stered market expectations that the world’s second-largest economy is re-gaining strength as the government’s pro-growth measures kick in.

Beijing stepped up policy � ne-tun-ing in recent weeks and has unveiled a slew of measures this year to help shore up the economy, which dipped to an 18-month low in the � rst quarter and is on track to post the weakest an-nual showing in 24 years.

China’s cabinet announced new eas-ing measures on Friday to help lower funding costs and reduce operating bur-dens for companies to give more support for the real economy, adding to moves

that included hastening construction of railways and public housing.

In South Korea, Asia’s fourth-largest economy and one of the leading manu-facturing and export powerhouses, the HSBC/Markit manufacturing gauge slid below 50 while trade data showed ex-ports fell.

In India, the manufacturing PMI edged up but came in slightly below the median forecast in a Reuters poll. Indonesia’s PMI surged to a record high but hopes were tempered after its trade balance slipped back into de� cit in April after two consecutive months of surpluses. l

A labourer paints antirust oil on vehicle at a factory in Wuhan, capital of central China's Hubei province REUTERS

HSBC’s Asia Paci� c chief arrives in Dhaka todayn Tribune Business Desk

The head of international Asia Paci� c at HSBC, Jayant Rikhye is to arrive today and had planned to stay in Bangladesh for the next couple of days.

He is also the head of strategy and planning at HSBC Asia Paci� c.

Jayant Rikhye will be meeting col-leagues from Bangladesh and a number of key HSBC clients and stakeholders, said a press release.

The head of international Asia Paci� c has direct responsibility for over 12 markets in Asia, comprising Bangladesh, Brunei, Indonesia, Japan,

Korea, Mauritius, New Zealand, Philippines, Sri Lanka, Taiwan, Thailand and Vietnam.

Jayant Rikhye joined the HSBC Group in 1989 in India. l

Wata stocks sky-rockets at 715% n Tribune Report

Stocks of Wata Chemicals Ltd yester-day saw a price hike of 715% to close at Tk487 each at the Dhaka Stock Ex-change as there was no price limit fol-lowing its corporate deceleration.

The board has recommended 30% stock dividend for the year ended on December 31, 2013.

Total value of the traded stocks of the company stood at Tk11.9 crore, making up 2.8% of the total trade at the prime bourse.

Wata Chemical Ltd has been trans-ferred from over-the-market to the DSE’s main trading platform on May 15.

Since beginning the trade in the main market, its stocks were not ex-change hands as the o� ered buying price failed to satisfy the seller.

The company’s annual general meeting will be held on June 27 at 11am at Fac-tory ground at Murapara, Rupganj in Narayangonj.

Record date of the declared stock dividend has been � xed on June 11.

However, most investors were un-happy for not getting the company’s � -nancial insights both on DSE server and its website. Its website is currently not functioning.

The company has also reported a net pro� t after tax of Tk3 crore during 2013 while it had made Tk2 crore in 2012.

Its yearly earnings per share in 2013 is equal to 1.3% of the currently traded price of the company, which is far be-low the on-going � xed deposit rates of-fered in banks.

The net asset value each share of the company is equal to Tk119.82 as of last year, which has been questioned by several analysts who failed to draw conclusions due to unavailability of su� cient information on the company. l

Jinnat Knitwears Ltd, a company of DBL Group has recently won CPI2-Top Factory Award 2013-14 for its excellent engagement and performance on reducing energy consumption. The award was given on June 1 at BGMEA Complex in Dhaka. BGMEA Chairprerson Atiqul Islam and Norbert of CPI2 were present at the ceremon

Walton Mobile Phone Distributor’s showroom named ‘Walton Mobile Smart Zone’ was inaugurated at Fakirapool in the capital city. Ilias Kanchan, famous � lm actor and the company’s executive director launched the showroom

Standard Bank Training Institute recently held a certi� cate awarding ceremony of the course on foundation of banking for the bank’s probationary senior o� cer. Mamun-Ur-Rashid, managing director (current charge) distributed the certi� cates among the participants as chief guest

Trust Bank Limited recently held its 15th meeting of its Shariah supervisory committee at the bank’s head o� ce. The committee’s chair Dr Mufti Muhammad Abdullah presided over the meeting

Shwapno, a retail chain recently launched its 46th outlet at Gopibagh in Dhaka. The outlet was inaugurated by Abu Naser, chief of operations at ACI Logistics Ltd

Double A supports Shishu Polli Plusn Tribune Business Desk

Double A has recently pledged to sup-port Shishu Polli Plus, a purpose built rehabilitation village for children and their mothers, with one year supply of paper and shoulder the computer training of the children.

We are pleased to take part in helping the underprivileged chil-dren of Bangladesh, by giving them the basic paper needs and vocational training for their own welfare, said Thirawit Leetavorn, the company’s senior executive vice president. l

The company has also reported a net pro� t after tax of Tk3 crore during 2013 while it had made Tk2 crore in 2012

WTO DG arrives B1 COLUMN 6countries. The US being single biggest export destination provides the trade concession to 97% of the products from Bangladesh, but the country’s main ex-port earner readymade garments is not entitled to enjoy the facility till now.

A roadmap has been declared to implement the expansion of the greater market access and the WTO is working on the issue, Ahmed said.

In accordance with the Bali Package, members of the developed and devel-oping countries that do not yet provide full duty-free and quota-free market access for products originating in LDCs shall seek to improve their existing du-ty-free and quota-free coverage for such products, so as to provide increasingly greater market access to LDCs, prior to the next ministerial conference.

Azevêdo is the sixth Director-Gen-eral of the WTO and his appointment took e� ect on September 1 last year for a four-year term. l

Planning minister defends o� cial FY14 GDP B1 COLUMN 6lysing the data provided by BBS.

Pointing � ngers at the CPD’s sur-prise on service sector growth in the outgoing � scal year, he said service sector has enough reason to grow. “In the last six months, export grew 19.96%, agriculture sector 3.5% and import 7.5%.”

About the transport sector, the main sub-sector of the service sec-tor, he said growth of bus, truck and auto-rickshaw increased by 2.2%,5.8% and 9.6% respectively, which has given an impetus on service sector growth.

Fees and commissions in the bank-ing sector has also increased by 13% and 20% this year compared to the

previous year, and dearness allowance of government o� cials and employees also contributed to the GDP growth in this � scal year, he said.

“Besides, a number of community clinics and registered primary schools have also increased, keeping positive impact on GDP growth.”

According to the CPD, the GDP growth projected by the BBS was shown so high at a time when the econ-omy went through turbulent political stage atmosphere in the � rst half of the � scal year 2014.

Many analysts including the World Bank and the Asian Development Bank expected the economic growth in FY14 to be between 5.5% and 6% in view of political unrest in the � rst half of the

� scal year.The CPD in January 2014 had also

predicted that the GDP growth rate in FY14 would be ranging between 5.6% and 5.8%.

CPD had said the BBS estimated that the service sector – worst su� erer dur-ing political unrest – grew by 5.8% in FY14 against 5.5% in FY13.

“This is quite surprising that the service sector grew by 0.3% over its previous � scal when the political � eld was relatively peaceful,” it said.

The service sector that contributed more than 50% of the total GDP was adversely a� ected due to restive po-litical programmes in the run up to the national election on January 5 this year, according to the CPD. l

B4 Back PageDHAKA TRIBUNE Tuesday, June 3, 2014

DILBERT

Solar plane makes debut with eye on global trip n AFP, Payerne

A sun-powered plane made a success-ful test � ight yesterdat, clearing a vital hurdle towards its goal of a round-the-world trip next year, its pilot and mis-sion chiefs said.

Solar Impulse 2 carried out a � ight lasting two hours and 15 minutes, half an hour longer than scheduled, Ger-man test pilot Markus Scherdel said.

“Everything worked as expected,” Scherdel told a press conference at an air base in Payerne, central Switzerland.

“Of course, we have to do more test-ing, but it’s a good start and I’m looking forward to � ying the airplane the next time.”

Built from carbon � bre, the 2.3-tonne plane has four 17.5-horse-power electrical motors powered by 17,248 solar cells studding its fuselage and 72-metre (234-feet) wingspan - as long as that of an Airbus A380.

It is the successor of Solar Impulse, a record-breaking craft that in 2010 notched up a 26-hour � ight, proving its ability to store enough power in lithi-um batteries during the day to keep � y-ing at night.

The forerunner was put through its paces in Europe, crossed the Mediter-ranean to reach Morocco and traversed the United States last year without us-ing a drop of fossil fuel.

120-hour � ight The goal with Solar Impulse 2 is to

� y non-stop for more than 120 hours - � ve days and � ve nights - enabling it to cross the Paci� c and Atlantic legs of its global mission.

The operation in March 2015 will circle the globe eastwards, making nu-merous stops on the way.

It will start in the Gulf, to bene� t from the Middle East’s low-cloud conditions.

The plane will head over the Arabian Sea to India, Myanmar and China, then cross the Paci� c Ocean, the United States, the Atlantic, southern Europe

and � nally North Africa before return-ing to its point of departure.

Speed at night will be limited to 46 kilometres (28.75 miles) per hour to prevent the batteries from being run down too quickly.

The pilot sits on a “business class” seat where he can take short naps, although lavatory conditions are de-scribed as basic.

He will be helped by a virtual co-pilot that will wake him up and report back any problems to mission control in Switzerland. The masterminds of the project are Bertrand Piccard, the scion of a dynasty of Swiss scientists-cum-

adventurers, and Andre Borschberg, a former Swiss airforce pilot.

Piccard made history in 1999 by be-coming the � rst person to � y around the world in a hot-air balloon.

He and Borschberg founded Solar Impulse a dozen years ago, frustrated with traditional airplane makers who refused to take them seriously.

The pair argued that more e� cient solar cells and batteries, coupled with ultra-light materials, could make a sun-powered plane a reality, even at night.

“This is really an experimental proj-ect of exploration, so everything is new,” Piccard said on Monday.

“We have to jump into the unknown at every moment, and today was one of these moments, where the � rst plane that should � y around the world next year had to be tested, fully tested, and I think for Andre and myself it was an incredible emotion.”

Borschberg said the test � ight was “a very important step.”

“Our goal is to � y arou nd the world next year, and we needed an airplane able to travel the � rst step, a � ying laboratory.

“This airplane will travel many days and many nights over the ocean, so it’s a big step up from the � rst one.” l

German test pilot Markus Scherdel steers the solar-powered Solar Impulse 2 aircraft for its maiden � ight at its base in Payerne on June 2. The aircraft, which was unveiled on April 9, 2014 weighs 2.4 tons with a wingspan of 72 meter and more than 17,000 solar cells. The attempt to � y around the world in stages using only solar energy will be made in 2015 AFP

Slower German in� ation seen raising pressure on ECB to actn Reuters, Berlin

Annual in� ation in Europe’s largest economy likely slowed in May, data from German states suggested yester-day, probably pushing down the broad-er euro zone rate and raising pressure on the European Central Bank to act when it meets this week.

Data from six states showed annual in� ation rates ranging from 0.6% to 1.1%. Economists had forecast that the preliminary national rate, due out at 2 p.m. (8 am EDT), would show consum-er prices climbed by 1.1% on the year.

In North Rhine-Westphalia (NRW), Germany’s most populous state and traditionally a bellwether for the na-tional data, consumer prices increased by 1.1% on the year, their lowest annual rate since Sept 2010.

But ING economist Carsten Brzeski said data from some other states show-ing weaker in� ation would probably push the national � gure down below 1%.

“It shows euro zone in� ation could be weaker than expected, increasing pressure on the ECB to act on Thurs-day,” he said.

Euro zone in� ation stood at 0.7% in April - well below the ECB target of close to but just below 2% - and a Re-uters poll shows economists expect data due out on Tuesday to show it held steady in May.

Brzeski said he expected the central bank to cuts its deposit rate into nega-tive territory at its June meeting and continue to o� er banks unlimited ac-cess to its funding until the end of 2015 or mid-2016.

Last week ECB Vice President Vi-tor Constancio said the ECB was not complacent about the risks from a

protracted period of low in� ation and would act if necessary while Governing Council member Ignazio Visco said ex-cessively low in� ation in the euro zone should be dealt with as � rmly as high in� ation.

Jennifer McKeown, senior European economist at Capital Economics, said a weighted average of data from six Ger-man states suggested the harmonized

index of consumer prices (HICP), the measure used by the ECB, probably fell to a four-year low of 0.8% or even lower in May from 1.1% in April.

That would be far lower than ex-pected - economists polled by Reuters had forecast that consumer prices har-monized to compare with other Euro-pean Union countries would rise by 1% on the year. l

Women inspect a shop with reduced goods in the western city of Herne REUTERS

Malaysia says Cadbury products found not to contain pig DNAn Reuters, Kuala Lumpur

New tests conducted by Malaysian authorities found that chocolate bars made by British confectioner Cadbury do not contain pig DNA, contrary to a previous � nding, the country’s Islamic a� airs agency said yesterday .

Cadbury withdrew two varieties of its chocolate snacks from sale in Mus-lim-majority Malaysia last week after government tests found traces of pork in them, leading some Islamic groups to call for a boycott on all of its prod-ucts.

Malaysia’s Islamic Development Department (Jakim) said none of the 11 samples it tested of Cadbury’s Dairy Milk Hazelnut, Cadbury Dairy Milk Roast Almond and other products from the company’s factory had shown posi-tive results for porcine DNA.

Jakim said in a statement that Cad-

bury’s halal certi� cation for the two products would remain suspended pending further tests and investiga-tions of its supply chain.

Jakim is the only body in Malaysia tasked with ensuring products are halal, or permissible by Islamic law. The previous tests were conducted in February by the country’s health ministry on products taken from store shelves.

Jakim had said those tests might not have been fair to Cadbury since the products could have been contaminat-ed after leaving the factory.

Cadbury Malaysia, whose parent � rm is Mondelez International Inc, has stood by its products’ halal worthiness and assured the public it was working with authorities to resolve the matter.

A Muslim consumer group that last week called on Malaysians to boycott Mondelez products said on Monday it

would not reverse its stance unless the health ministry concurs with the new results released by Jakim.

“There are still a lot of question marks there,” said Sheikh Abdul Ka-reem Khadaied, the head of research with the Muslim Consumers Associa-tion Malaysia.

An o� cial at the health ministry told Reuters that it “has handed the en-tire issue over to the Islamic agency”.

Following last week’s announce-ment that the chocolate bars tested positive for the non-halal ingredient, fellow Muslim countries Indonesia and Saudi Arabia said they were also carry-ing out tests on Cadbury products.

Concerns over halal food standards could jeopardise Mondelez’s sales in Muslim markets that are larger than Malaysia, such as Indonesia, home to the world’s largest Muslim population, and in the Middle East. l

Samsung to launch � rst Tizen-based smartphonen Reuters, Seoul

Samsung Electronics Co Ltd plans to launch the � rst smartphone based on its Tizen operating system in the third quarter, marking the company’s latest bid to build up its own ecosystem and reduce reliance on Google Inc’s An-droid.

The South Korean � rm on Monday said the Samsung Z, which comes with a 4.8 inch high-de� nition display and o� ers features such as a � ngerprint sensor, will be unveiled at the Tizen Developer Conference in San Francisco on Tuesday.

The phone will be available in Rus-sia sometime in the July-September pe-riod with other markets to follow, the � rm said in a statement without speci-fying which markets.

Samsung did not o� er sales fore-casts or how much the phone will sell for, though an executive told Reuters in April that the company is working on at least two models powered by Tizen and that will be released “in a few countries where we can do well.”

The Samsung Z would be the latest e� ort by the electronics giant to build momentum for Tizen, with its Gear 2 smartwatches also powered by the platform.

The majority of Samsung’s mobile devices are based on Google’s Android platform. The push to develop its own operating system is part of e� orts to re-duce dependence on the U.S. � rm, but delays in product launches have under-cut expectations.

The Samsung executive said in April he thinks Tizen would have to account for up to 15 percent of Samsung’s total smartphone shipments to be deemed a success.

“There is plenty of room and plenty of opportunity for a strong third ven-dor; arguably if you can carve out 10 percent of a two billion units market in smartphones (by 2018), then that could be an opportunity,” said Rachel

Lashford, Singapore-based analyst at Canalys.

Many in the industry are still in the dark about Tizen, however, so there are questions about Samsung’s level of commitment to the platform, Lashford said.

Analysts also say it will be di� cult for Samsung to lure enough developers to make the apps and services neces-sary to mount a serious challenge to dominant platforms Android and iOS from Apple Inc .

Samsung declined to say how many apps are available for the operating sys-tem.

“The market for Tizen won’t be as big as Android or Apple’s iOS, so I think it will be a challenge for Samsung to build up an ecosystem,” said IM Invest-ment analyst Lee Min-hee.

Tizen may be more useful as lever-age in future negotiations with Google, Lee said. l

An employee of Japanese electronics company Panasonic wears a 4K capable wearable camcorder for a demonstration at the launch ceremony of the next generation of 4K high-de� nition broadcasting in Tokyo on June 2, 2014. Japan began test broadcasting satellite television programmes in 4K, as major � rms including Sony and Sharp bet on the super high-de� nition technology to rescue their embattled TV units AFP