News3 The prosecution yesterday completed its part of closing arguments against war crimes accused Motiur Rahman Nizami seeking highest punishment for the “ring leader” of collaborators.

Nation6 Students of Nachol Madhabpur High School in Chapainawabganj fear they have to su� er a lot in the coming days as the summer season is nearer.

International8 EU member states have agreed the wording of sanctions on Russia, including travel restrictions and asset freezes against those responsible for violating the sovereignty of Ukraine, according to a draft document seenby Reuters.

Op-Ed11 While the entire Bangladesh banking industry is struggling with ine� ciency and graft, many are thinking: How do we ensure the migration ofbest practices to Bangladeshbanking?

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THURSDAY, MARCH 13, 2014 | www.dhakatribune.com | SECOND EDITION

7 | PRESERVING OUR NATIONAL HERITAGE

Khoka now to quit city leadership to ‘save face’

n Mohammad Al-Masum Molla

Two days after BNP Chairperson Khale-da Zia’s decision to reconstitute the Dhaka city unit for its failure to build up any resistance against the January 5 polls the committee Convener Sadeque Hossain Khoka yesterday hoped his party would relieve him of his respon-sibility soon.

His announcement stoked intra-par-ty feud and controversy among the party leaders and activists as many of them think it was Khoka’s “face saving trick”.

Khoka, who was in the helm of Dha-ka city BNP for the last 17 years, tried his best to cling to the post and to this end he held a meeting with the BNP chairperson but eventually he failed to manage the party chief, sources said.

Khaleda on March 9 in a standing committee meeting decided to reor-ganise the city committee.

Party sources said Khoka sat with some of his colleagues on Tuesday night and decided to hold a press con-ference which the senior leaders of the party disagreed saying it would amount to humiliating party decision.

Three senior leaders of the party PAGE 2 COLUMN 3

Violence escalates ahead of upazila pollsn Mohammad Al-Masum Molla

and Mohammad Zakaria

Escalation of violence and violation of electoral code of conduct across the country have marked the scenar-io ahead of the third phase of upazila parishad elections.

A total of 81 upazilas will go to the polls on March 15.

As the BNP-Jamaat-backed candi-dates led the last two phases of the elections, the ruling Awami League has been trying hard to make its candidates win in the next phase. The BNP and Ja-maat-e-Islami have also been trying to keep on winning the victory.

Election related violence slightly increased compared to the last two phases, but the Election Commission was yet to take any measures to combat violence and create a congenial atmos-phere for voters. The EC only suspend-ed polling in an upazila due to violence.

Stray incidents of violence had also marked the � rst phase while one per-son was killed in the second phase of the upazila polls. But one person has already been killed ahead of the third phase prompting the EC to postpone voting in the upazila.

The Awami League tried to ensure win of single candidates in more seats PAGE 2 COLUMN 4

A cow grazes on the land that was acquired to set up a training school for the RAB forces in Porabari of Gazipur. The photo was taken yesterday SYED ZAKIR HOSSAIN

Missing jet may have strayed toward Andaman Sean Reuters

Malaysia’s military has traced what could have been the jetliner missing for almost � ve days to an area south of the Thai holiday island of Phuket, hun-dreds of miles from its last known po-sition, the country’s air force chief said yesterday.

After a series of at times con� icting statements, the latest revelation under-lined that authorities remain uncertain even where to look for the plane, and no closer to explaining what happened to Malaysia  Airlines  Flight MH370 or the 239 people on board.

The � ight disappeared from civilian radar screens shortly before 1:30am

on Saturday, less than an hour after taking o� from Kuala Lumpur, as it � ew northeast across the mouth of the Gulf of Thailand bound for Beijing.

Malaysian Air Force Chief Rodzali Daud told a news conference that an aircraft was plotted on military radar at 2:15am, 200 miles northwest of Penang Island o� Malaysia’s west coast.

It was not con� rmed that the uni-denti� ed plane was Flight MH370, but Malaysia was sharing the data with international civilian and military au-thorities, Rodzali said.

“We are corroborating this,” he add-ed. “We are still working with the ex-perts, it is an unidenti� ed plot.”

Agonising waitAccording to the data from Rodzali, if it was the missing plane it would have � own for 45 minutes and lost only about 5,000 feet in altitude.

There was no word on which di-rection it was headed and still no clue what happened aboard, prolonging the agonising wait for news for hundreds of relatives of those on board.

A position 200 miles northwest of Penang, in the northern part of the Strait of Malacca, would put the plane roughly south of Phuket and east of the tip of Indonesia’s Aceh province and India’s Nicobar island chain.

Indonesia and Thailand have said PAGE 2 COLUMN 1

Plans to fence parliament suspendedn Kamran Reza Chowdhury

The authorities have temporarily halt-ed the move to erect security fence around the parliament building until the original master plan is collected from the US.

Two weeks ago, Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina had a meeting with o� -cials of the Public Works Department, the Department of Architecture and security wing of the parliament, where she enquired about the construction of the fence.

She also asked them whether the fencing would hamper the proposed construction of the metro rail link that

PAGE 2 COLUMN 3

RAB ‘grabs’ parts of reserve forestNew Gazipur training centre driving away locals, hurting livelihoodsn Ahmed Zayeef

Elite force Rapid Action Battalion is constructing a training centre, destroy-ing a part of the reserve forest in Gazi-pur. To pave the way, the government in a gazette noti� cation earlier this month cancelled declaration of the al-located 20 acre land.

Due to the sudden development, not only the forest but also the poor inhab-itants, their age-old accommodation, education, property and assets have been threatened. RAB o� cials have al-legedly been using forces to drive away the locals from the place.

When contacted, top o� cials of the district administration and the forest department responded reluctantly, and

did not give any details. On the other hand, RAB brushed away the allega-tions of intimidation.

The Dhaka Tribune reporter visited the area, Porabari village, on Monday. It is around seven kilometres from Gazipur intersection, near the Porabari Bazar, and only a 5-minute walking dis-tance from Dhaka-Mymensingh high-way.

It is green, verdant, peaceful village. A pond named “Botgachiar Pukur” is at the centre of the area. A lot of mango, banana, jackfruit, litchi, Shishu and eu-calyptus trees were seen in the area.

The gazette issued on March 5 said: “According to the Forest Law of 1927, the land was declared as a reserve for-est through gazette noti� cations of

April 13, 1955 and November 15, 1984. To establish the permanent building of RAB force’s training school, the govern-ment decided to withdraw the declara-tion of this land.”

According to the gazette, the area is situated in Baupara Beat of Bhawal Na-tional Park Range. A total of 19.97 acres of land have been declared as non-clas-si� ed area. The government o� cially declared it as a national park in 1973.

The RAB authorities have already started their work. They marked the area with pillars and hung four sign-boards that read: Entry prohibited; area selected for RAB force’s training school.

They also evacuated 27 landless families who had been living in the area for over 50 years. A non-govern-ment high school building and half of its playground also falls under the ac-quired area.

Signs of destruction were seen all over the area. Few dismantled mud-made houses were standing without roofs. Most of the landless families left the area on a short notice issued by the RAB personnel. Some of them are now staying in the adjacent area by making temporary houses.

Day labour Yunus Ali told this cor-respondent that some RAB personnel came to the area on January 3 this year, along with the local ward councillor Delwar Hossain.

“They gathered us in an open place and ordered us to leave the area imme-diately. We urged them to give us some time, and they gave only 15 days. But they came back before that and forced us to leave.”

While talking to Yunus, few oth-er people gathered around a tea stall within a very short time. All of them were eager to say something about the sudden evacuation.

PAGE 2 COLUMN 1

27 landless families who had been livingin the area for over50 years have been forced to leave

15 | DJOKOVIC AND LI ADVANCE

News2 DHAKA TRIBUNE Thursday, March 13, 2014

DEEP-SEA PORT AT SONADIA

Dubai � rm proposes pre-construction study n Mohosinul Karim

The DP World, an Emirati marine ter-minal operator interested in investing in three major projects in Bangladesh, yesterday proposed that a study be conducted before investment in con-struction of a deep-sea port at Sonadia in Cox’s Bazar was made.

The idea was suggested during a pre-sentation of its multi-billion dollar invest-ment proposal for construction of deep-sea port at the Prime Minister’s O� ce.

Members of the government’s high-level committee led by the prin-cipal secretary to the prime minister

were present at the presentation.DP World proposed a long-term

agreement for the New Mooring Con-tainer Terminal at the port of Chit-tagong be made based on the Build-Op-erate-Transfer (BOT) method. This is a joint venture with the government of Bangladesh for building a deep-sea port at Sonadia and also an inland container terminal on JV/EOT/BOT at Gazipur.

Jamal Abdul Nasser, CEO of the deep-sea port body told the Dhaka Tribune that two companies from the Netherlands and China also made pre-sentations.

“Nothing has been � nalised yet. It

will be done during the next meeting to be held soon,” he said.

According to the shipping ministry, proposal of the DP World has its posi-tion on top of the list while that of Rot-terdam Port, the Netherlands-based � rm, and China Harbour, the Chinese � rm, are also under consideration.

According to the proposal of DP World submitted to the ministry ear-lier in the day, at least $14 billion will be needed to construct the deep-sea port. Construction will be done in three phases by 2055.

The proposal says the UAE, through DP World, has experience in develop-

ing, operating and maintaining large seaports globally.

“The DP World has a portfolio of more than 65 marine terminals across six continents, including new devel-opments underway in India, Africa, Europe, South America and the Middle East. In 2012, it handled more than 56 million TEU (twenty-foot equivalent container units),” the proposal reads.

The proposal also mentioned that Bangladesh had achieved e� ective eco-nomic growth over the past 10 years and had seen consistent growth in its export and import trade.

Majority of its export and import

tra� c is currently being handled from the port of Chittagong facing severe congestion because of infrastructure bottleneck which in turn is hampering Bangladesh’s trade growth, the propos-al said.

Meanwhile, additional secretary of the shipping ministry Mohammad Alauddin will be attending a meet-ing of the Bay of Bengal Initiative for Multi-Sectoral Technical and Econom-ic Cooperation (BIMSTEC) in Thailand on March 18.

Construction of deep-sea ports in the BIMSTEC area is expected to be dis-cussed at the meeting. l

Missing jet may have strayed toward Andaman Sea PAGE 1 COLUMN 5their militaries detected no sign of any unusual aircraft in their airspace.

The position is hundreds of miles west of the point where the Boeing 777-200ER dropped o� air tra� c control screens. Malaysia has asked India for help in tracing the aircraft and New Delhi’s coastguard planes have joined the search.

Authorities however are continuing to search around both locations - at the last known position of the plane over the Gulf of Thailand and around the radar plotting site where the Malacca Strait meets the Andaman Sea.

In total, the search is over 27,000 square nautical miles (93,000 sq-km), an area the size of Hungary. Until now, there has been no con� rmed sighting of the plane or any debris.

A dozen countries are helping Malaysia in the search, with 42 ships and 39 aircraft involved, Transport Minister Hishammuddin Hussein said.

Confusing information

Malaysia has been criticised for giving con� icting and confusing information on the last known location of aircraft.

Earlier yesterday, Air Force Chief Rodzali had denied saying military radar had tracked MH370 � ying over the Strait of Malacca.

Vietnam brie� y scaled down search operations in waters o� its southern coast, saying it was receiving scanty and confusing information from Malaysia over where the aircraft may have headed after it lost contact with air tra� c control. Hanoi later said the search was back on in full force and was even extending on to land.

China also said its air force would sweep areas in the sea, clarifying however that no searches over land were planned.

Nothing ruled outIn the absence of any concrete evi-dence to explain the plane’s disappear-ance, authorities have not ruled out anything. Police have said they were investigating whether any passengers

or crew on the plane had personal or psychological problems that might shed light on the mystery, along with the possibility of a hijacking, sabotage or mechanical failure.

The airline said it was taking seri-ously a report by a South African wom-an who said the co-pilot of the missing plane had invited her and a female companion to sit in the cockpit during a � ight two years ago, in an apparent breach of security.

Hugh Dunleavy, the commercial di-rector of Malaysia Airlines, however, told Reuters there was no reason to blame the crew.

“We have no reason to believe that there was anything, any actions, internally by the crew that caused the disappearance of this aircraft,” he said.

The Boeing 777 has one of the best safety records of any commercial air-craft in service. Its only previous fatal crash came on July 6 last year when Asiana Airlines Flight 214 struck a sea-wall on landing in San Francisco, killing three people. l

RAB ‘grabs’ parts of reserve forest PAGE 1 COLUMN 2Harun-or-Rashid, a tailor, said: “One day they [RAB members] came to my house and beat me up in front of my wife and children. They threatened me with dire consequences if I did not leave the area immediately.”

The non-government education-al institute, Shah Su� Fosi Uddin High School, was established in 1995. Around 650 students are studying there now. The school has two build-ings – one is a two-storied one, and the other is single-storied.

There is a playground in front of the school. It is also used for Eid congrega-tions where people from Baorait, Uttor Santra and Porabari villages gather ev-ery year.

But the one-storey building and half of the ground have fallen under RAB’s acquisition.

Headmaster Sanaullah Sarkar said: “The RAB authorities verbally told us that they will not acquire this land per-manently. But few days ago, we wanted to cut a tree which the school authori-ties planted a couple of years back. We wanted to make some chairs and tables for the students but they [RAB] did not allow us to do it.”

“Now we are concerned about the existence of the school.”

Some 10 RAB personnel are now staying in the area in a house which was made by Abul Kalam Azad, former managing director of Bangladesh Tea Board.

He said: “I bought this land in 1978. When the forest department claimed it to be government prop-erty, I went to the court. The High Court gave the decision in my favour. Now I am waiting for the SupremeCourt’s decision.”

Azad claimed that the RAB person-nel went there all of a sudden and ac-quired his house without any notice. “I had a farm with 25 Australian cows.

They untied those cows and scattered them all over the village. After search-ing, I found only � ve of them.”

Wing Commander ATM Habibur Rahman, director of RAB’s legal and media wing, said: “We wanted some land from the government to establish the school and they gave us this land. Ask them why they did so.”

About the intimidation by RAB per-sonnel in the acquired area, he said: “We did not receive any such allega-tions.”

While talking to the Dhaka Tribune over phone, Chief Forest Conservator Yunus Ali � rst claimed that the area was not reserved forest, it is “acquired by the government.”

As the reporter read out the full ga-zette, he started stammering. He said: “As the government is satis� ed with the RAB, it gave them permission.”

He declined to make any further comment on the issue.

Md Nurul Islam, the Gazipur depu-ty commissioner, said he and his o� ce did not have anything to do with the issue. He came to know about it upon receiving a copy of the gazette noti� -cation.

Ishtiaq Uddin Ahmad, country rep-resentative for IUCN Bangladesh, told the Dhaka Tribune: “This reserved for-est has already been disturbed. It has already shrunk in size. Any permanent infrastructure is harmful here.”

The Border Guard Bangladesh au-thorities early last year took over 40 acres in Cox’s Bazar’s Rajarkul range and started developing it without prior permission from the forest department. Of the land, 36 acres fall within the purview of a re-serve and the rest under a protectedforest area.

Former environment and forest minister Hasan Mahmud termed the land allocation a special consideration of the government. l

Khoka now to quit city leadership to ‘save face’ PAGE 1 COLUMN 3said though Khoka would be dropped from the committee his strong grip over it would remain ever strong as no other competent city leaders came to the limelight in more than a decade.

When contacted senior leaders re-fused to comment but expressed their grievances saying Khoka was trying to linger the reconstitution of the com-mittee by making his announcement public.

“Those who are involved in corrupt politics only they can say like this. He made the announcement to conceal his failure,” Goyeshwar Chandra Roy, a standing committee member said.

Earlier on February 10, Khaleda slammed the city unit leaders for not taking to the street. “When I was evict-ed from my cantonment residence no-body then opened � re on you but you were not seen on the streets. You have

failed,” Khaleda blamed the city leaders.Khoka at a press brie� ng said he did

not want to stay in the committee and requested the BNP chairperson to re-constitute the city committee.

“I do not want to carry on with the responsibility anymore. I requested Netri (Khaleda) to reconstitute the committee and she will take initia-tive soon. When I was in jail I sent a message to Madam (Khaleda) to do so with either Mirza Abbas or Abdul Awal Mintoo putting at the helm of the city unit,” Khoka said.

“I believe in democracy. As I am a loyal activist of the party, I do not want the party to remain stagnant and that’s why I will carry on with the role of con-vener till the reconstitution of the com-mittee,” he said.

On criticism from inside and outside the party for poor performance of city leaders on the street, Khoka defending

himself said: “Those people have poor knowledge about politics. Some of our party leaders are making such state-ments and playing blame game. I think it is not proper party politics.”

Explaining why they failed to build up any resistance on the instruction of the party chief he said: “We fought against Ayub Khan, Yahya Khan and autocratic Ershad. This time the gov-ernment was harsher than even the government of that time. We could not wage any movement because of killing and abduction.”

“It was Khoka’s trick to share the blame of failure on senior leaders,” a senior leader told the Dhaka Tribune.

The city unit was formed on May 14, 2011 with Sadeque Hossain Khoka as its convener and Salam the member secre-tary. It was asked to form the ward and the thana-level committees within six months. l

Plans to fence parliament suspended PAGE 1 COLUMN 6goes along the eastern side of Jatiya Sangsad Avenue.

The o� cials told the premier that they did not have the original plan of the building and it would cost Tk85 lakh to get a copy from architect Luis I Kahn’s son.

“Such a cost should not hold up the project,” Hasina told the o� cials and ordered the Department of Architec-ture to get the copy as soon as possible.

“We have suspended the construc-tion of the fence until we get the orig-inal copy of the master plan,” Selim Khan, executive engineer of Jatiya Sangsad Bhaban, told the Dhaka Tri-bune.

Meanwhile, the public works de-partment has already marked a straight line with red � ags from the northern side of Sangsad Avenue to the southern end of the parliament premises.

The line is around 30 feet inside the proposed fencing point.

Metro rail routeAccording to the Parliament Secretariat sources, the public works department has assessed that the existing bound-ary wall on the eastern side has en-croached at least 30 feet of the Sangsad Avenue, which should have been 150 feet. At present, the road is 120 feet.

Starting in Pallabi of Mirpur, the pro-posed metro rail route is set to cross along

the eastern side of the Sangsad Avenue and take a left-turn near Ispahani Eye Hospital and head toward Sayedabad.

Environmentalists and architects raised concerns over the construction of the metro rail project for alleged vio-lation of Kahn’s design.

An o� cial of the Parliament Secre-tariat said the technical experts on the metro rail project would examine the site and go for construction of the in-frastructure upon instruction from the prime minister who would examine the original plan.

One of the largest legislative com-plexes in the world, the parliament building comprises 215 acres of land. It was inaugurated on January 28, 1982. l

Muhith: Revenue target not possiblen Tribune Report

Finance Minister Abul Mal Abdul Muhit yesterday told the parliament that the government had made the decision to collect revenues for the 2013-14 � scal year and said it would not be possible to achieve the revenue target because of political crisis and global recession.

The recent political situation of the country and global recession had neg-ative impact on investment, export and import, the minister said while re-plying to a question of Awami League lawmaker Musfa� zur Rahman of Chit-tagong 16 constituency.

The minister confessed that there was corruption in taxation and indus-trialisation, saying the government was not able to take action as there was no allegation in this regard.

“All corruption cases become nor-mal if there is not any complaint. But if we get a complaint, we take action against it,” he said.

Replying to the question of M Abdul Lalif, the minister also said the government was informed about fraudulences in mobile and online banking, which mostly happened because of lack of IT related knowledge of the users. l

MPs take part in anthem rehearsaln Tribune Report

Speaker Shirin Sharmin Chaudhury and members of parliament yesterday took part in a rehearsal to sing the na-tional anthem as preparation for a re-cord-making attempt on March 26 at the national parade square.

Over 50 MPs, including several minis-ters, assembled at the south plaza of the Jatiya Sangsad Bhaban in the afternoon to the practice with singer Mita Haque.

The rehearsal continued for about half an hour before the house went into session.

The Parliament Secretariat provided the MPs with printed copies of the na-tional anthem.

However, most of the MPs fumbled while singing in tune with Mita.

MP Rahmat Ali, who could not man-age to stand for more than � ve min-utes, fell ill and had to sit down while singing the national anthem.

According to the plan, over three lakh people will sing the anthem on In-dependence Day to enter the Guinness Book of World Records. l

Abu Ha� z: Violence during polls is commonplace n Tribune Report

Election Commissioner Mohammad Abu Ha� z yesterday said violence during polls became a commonplace in the country.

“If violence does not occur during polls, it seems unusual. Our neighbour-ing country, India, also witnesses vio-lence during polls,” he told reporters at the EC secretariat.

The commission had taken stern measures and that was why incidents of violence during polls were much less, Ha� z said.

The commissioner said holding elec-tion in a day had turned into a culture.

The commission was holding polls in phases for di� erent reasons like SSC examinations, he mentioned, adding that the army assisted the election of-� cials in holding polls.

The commission will sit today with the chiefs of law enforcement agencies, principal sta� o� cer of armed forces division and o� cials concerned for talks on the deployment of lawmen to the Tangail 8 by-poll.

The Tangail 8 by-election would be held on March 29. l

Red � ags are erected near some date trees in front of the Jatiya Sangsad Bhaban to mark the areas designated for the proposed metro rail tracks. The photo was taken yesterday NASHIRUL ISLAM

Violence escalates PAGE 1 COLUMN 3failed in at least 50 seats.

The BNP-Jamaat coalition also failed to manage its rebel candidates. Candi-dates of both the Awami League and the BNP and rebels were busy carrying out last moment polls campaign with allegations and counter allegations of violation of electoral code of conduct. The polls campaign will end tonight.

Although the EC was thinking of sending letters to the political parties, especially the ruling party ministers and MPs, asking them not to in� uence the local body polls, it did not as of yes-terday, a senior EC o� cial told the Dha-ka Tribune seeking anonymity.

The commission observed that most incidents of violence occurred in areas where there were ministers and MPs.

“We are keeping watch on the situ-ation. The commission asked the au-thorities concerned to take stern action against anyone violating electoral laws and to keep an eye on the situation,” Election Commissioner Mohammad Abu Ha� z told the Dhaka Tribune yesterday.

About writing to the political par-ties, he said the EC would observe the

third phase of polls and then make a decision on this. Meanwhile, the EC postponed the election in Shreepur up-azila of Gazipur as violence � ared up in the upazila. The High Court also stayed the polls in Fenchuganj upazila.

At least 15 Awami League activists were injured in attacks by the support-ers of BNP-backed candidate in Fulgazi upazila of Feni. The attackers vandalised the election o� ce of the Awami League-backed candidate and set � re to two cars.

Army and other law enforcement agencies, including Border Guard Ban-gladesh, Rapid Action Battalion, police and Ansar, would be deployed from to-day in the upazilas to maintain law and order during the polls.

A total of 1,119 candidates are con-testing the polls in 81 upazilas. Of them, 419 are vying for chairman posts, 423 for vice-chairman posts, and 277 for women vice-chairman posts.

A total of 76,216 law enforcers will be deployed in 5,444 polling stations in 81 upazilas where 35,331 polling booths have been set up. A total of 13,185,013 voters — 66,00,131 male and 65,67,832 fe-male — will cast their votes in the polls. l

Khandaker Mosharraf detained in graft casen Tribune Report

The police detained BNP Stand-ing Committee member Khandaker Mosharraf Hossain yesterday night, in connection with a case � led by the An-ti-Corruption Commission.

The BNP leader was held from his Gulshan residence in the capital by ACC Deputy Director Ahsan Ali with the help of local police, said Pronob Kumar Bhattcharjee, public relation of-� cer of the ACC.

Earlier, the commission � led a case against Khandaker Mosharraf on charge of allegedly laundering around Tk9.54crore to the United Kingdom.

Nasim Anwar, director of the an-ti-graft watchdog, � led the case with the Ramna police station on February 6.

According to the case statement, the former minister earned for-eign currency valued over £800,000 (Tk95,395,381) by abusing his power between 2001 and 2006, and through concealing information.

He deposited the money at a � xed-term deposit account at Lloyds TSB O� shore Private Banking at Guernsey in the UK. The joint account belongs to the former minis-ter and his wife Bilkis Akhter Hossain.

Earlier on February 25, the Appel-late Division canceled the High Court verdict that granted a six-week antici-patory bail to Khandaker Mosharraf in a money laundering case.

The � ve-member apex court bench headed by Chief Justice Md Muzammel Hossain yesterday came up with the ruling in response to an appeal lodged on February 16 by the ACC.

Meanwhile, BNP Chairperson Khale-da Zia condemned the “arrest” of Khandaker Mosharraf and demanded his immediate release.

In a statement signed by the par-ty’s Joint Secretary General Ruhul Kabir Rizvi, Khaleda Zia said: “The in-cumbent illegal government has been hatching conspiracy to destroy the op-position party and Mosharraf’s arrest is part of that conspiracy.”

Arresting a veteran leader like Mosharraf in a false case would lead the government to a wrong direction, she added.l

3NewsDHAKA TRIBUNE Thursday, March 13, 2014

NOTICE FOR PUBLIC CONSULATION

MEETING

A Public Consulation Meeting will be held as a part of preparation of Environment Impact Assessment (EIA) at proposed plant site at APSCL Complex, Ashuganj, Brahmanbaria on 22 March, 2014 at 11.00 am.

Your kind participation will be highly appreciated.

Authority United Ashuganj Energy Ltd.

HC drops contempt proceedings against journosn Tribune Report

The High Court yesterday dropped the contempt of court proceedings against two Bangla newspapers and president and general secretaries of four journal-ists bodies for demanding apology from lawyer Rokanuddin Mahmud for his de-meaning comment against journalists.

The bench of Justice Naima Haider and Justice Zafar Ahmed passed the order after the journalists of the dailies – Samakal and Naya Diganta, and the Dhaka Reporters Unity, Barisal Division Journalists Association, Dhaka Univer-sity Journalists Association and Jagan-nath University Journalists Association sought unconditional apology.

The two dailies published the state-ments of the four organisations and later Rokanuddin drew the court’s at-tention to those. On Sunday, the bench issued a contempt of court ruling against the editors and publishers of the two newspapers, the president and secretar-ies of the journalists bodies.

On March 2, the same bench on its own motion summoned Mizanur Rah-man Khan, joint editor of Prothom Alo, for writing a post-editorial questioning the anticipatory bails granted by the bench. The court issued a contempt of court ruling against Editor Matiur Rah-man and Mizanur. l

Alleged war criminal vandalises witness’ house in Begumganjn Our correspondent, Noakhali

A man dubbed as “war criminal” in as-sociation with his cohorts in Begumganj upazila of the district allegedly van-dalised the house of a witness in a war crimes case.

The incident occurred early yesterday in the village of Choia Hossainpur under Rajganj union in the upazila.

Locals said Belal ‘Rajakar’ – as he

was known in the village for his alleged involvement in war crimes – allegedly vandalised the house of Md Abdul Gafur around 4am yesterday. Gafur was a wit-ness in the war crimes case against Belal. The case was lodged with the judicial magistrate court of Noakhali on May 18, 2010, by one Moklesur Rahaman, son of Mo� j Mia in the same village.

Mosta� jur Rahaman, o� cer-in-charge of Begumganj Model police station, said

the lawmen rushed to the spot immedi-ately after hearing the news of vandalism and brought the situation under control.

A legal battle over a piece of land was going on between Belal and Gafur for a long time, the OC said, adding that on Tuesday Belal got the court verdict in his favour, and a sheer vengeance might have led to the vandalism.

Gafur said he would � le a case with the police station in this connection. l

7 amici curie to hear national poll’s uncontested winner casen Nazmus Sakib

The High Court yesterday asked six Su-preme Court lawyers and the secretary of Shushashoner Jonno Nagorik (SHU-JON) to place their opinions as amici curie during the hearing on constitu-tionality of declaring an uncontested candidate winner in general election.

Senior lawyers Dr Kamal Hossain, M Amir-Ul Islam, Ra� que-Ul Huq, Mahmudul Islam, Moudud Ahmed and Rokanuddin Mahmud and SHUJON Secretary Badiul Alam Majumder will attend the hearing when the case is put on the cause list from March 14 to 31, Deputy Attorney General Al-Amin Sark-

er told the Dhaka Tribune.The bench of Justice Mirza Hus-

sain Haider and Justice Khurshid Alam Sarkar gave the order.

On February 16, the bench had issued a ruling seeking explanations as to why the provision of the Representation of the People Order (RPO) for declaring an uncontested candidate winner in par-liamentary poll should not be declared unconstitutional.

It passed the order in response to a writ plea � led on December 17 by Jatiya Party Vice-Chairman Khandker Abdus Salam.

The cabinet secretary, the law sec-retary, the chief election commissioner

and the Election Commission secretary were asked to reply to the ruling in 10 days. However, they had not replied yet, lawyer for the petitioner Hassan MS Azim told the Dhaka Tribune yesterday.

The petition said: “The [RPO] provi-sion is also contrary to the constitution as it inherently possesses the scope of arbitrary and discriminatory use of the election process by the political parties and, thereby, gets their choice of can-didates declared by the Election Com-mission to have been elected avoiding participation of the people.”

A total of 153 lawmakers were elect-ed unopposed in the 10th parliamentary election held on January 5. l

SYLHET JMB ATTACK

Female leaders asked to testify May 6 n Tribune Report

A Sylhet court yesterday ruled that the four female leaders including an Awa-mi League lawmaker injured in a JMB attack on March 24, 2004 appear before it on May 06 to testify against the ac-cused of the banned Islamist out� t.

Judge Mohidul Islam of Public Se-curity Disruption Prevention Tribunal passed the order. The female leaders were supposed to appear before the tri-bunal yesterday, but they were absent from their court appearance.

The four female witnesses are law-

maker Syeda Zebunnessa Haq, district unit Mohila Dal joint secretary Asma Kamran, Mohila League general secre-tary Rubi Fatema Islam and its leader Salma Basit. According to the court sources, JMB members launched an at-tack on a meeting held at the lawmak-er’s house. At least 15 leaders of Awami League were injured in the attack.

Following the attack, the lawmak-er’s husband Enamul Haq � led a case with Kotwali police station against the JMB leaders including Mufti Abdul Hannan, Delowar Hossain, Mo� jul Is-lam and Mufti Moinuddin. l

HC to hear amici curie on judges’ appointment issuen Tribune Report

Five senior lawyers have been asked to present their opinion as amici curie on a writ petition that sought speci� c guidelines for appointing judges of the High Court.

The lawyers are Dr Kamal Hossain, Barrister Ra� que-Ul Huq, Moudud Ahmed, Rokanuddin Mahmud and Ajmalul Hossain QC. They would place their opinion in their convenient time.

The bench of Justice Mirza Hus-sain Haider and Justice Khurshid Alam Sarkar passed the order.

Hassan MS Azim, lawyer for the peti-tioner, told the Dhaka Tribune that the court on June 6, 2010 sought explana-tions from the government as to why speci� c guidelines should not be framed for the appointment to bring transparen-cy and competitiveness in the process.

The matter would be in cause list for hearing after vacation that starts from tomorrow until March 31, he said.l

PM: Public health threatened by food adulteration n Tribune Report

Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina yester-day told the Jatiya Sangsad that adul-teration of food items has become a threat against public health.

“Some unscrupulous traders have been committing isolated crimes by mixing formalin with food items in some areas of the country,” she said while replying to a query by lawmaker Altab Uddin Sarkar during the ques-tion-answer session.

The premier said the government had already taken stern steps to deal with the dishonest traders.

The parliament sitting, chaired by Speaker Shirin Sharmin Chaudhury, had the � rst 30 minutes of the question-answer session selected for

the premier. Hasina also said the government

had been carrying out a campaign to create awareness among the people against food adulteration.

“The government has enacted laws and set up a directorate to protect con-sumers’ rights and impose restriction on import of formalin,” she added.

Responding to a supplementary question from Awami League law-maker Shamsul Haque Chowdhury, the prime minister said her govern-ment would keep up the development of the country, adding that the people had again given them the chance to form a government.

Hasina said the country would march forward even in the face of political violence unleashed by the

BNP-Jamaat.Replying to a query by Awami

League lawmaker Enamul Haque, the premier also told the parliament about six priority “fast track” projects for the current tenure that include Padma Multipurpose Bridge, Ruppur Nuclear Power Plant, coal-based power plant of Rampal, Mass Rapid Transit (MRT) of Dhaka (Metro Rail Project), deep seaport of Sonadia and LNG terminal project.

Listing the government’s long-term economic plan, Hasina said the country would turn into a mid-income country by 2021 and a developed country by 2041.

“The government has been working to decrease the poverty rate to 13% by 2021,” she added. l

A DMP employee installs CCTV cameras at an Uttara intersection yesterday as part of the beefed up security measures surrounding the T20 World Cup SYED ZAKIR HOSSAIN

Prosecution ends arguments in Nizami casen Udisa Islam

The prosecution yesterday completed its part of closing arguments against war crimes accused Motiur Rahman Nizami seeking highest punishment for the “ring leader” of collaborators.

Prosecutors Mohammad Ali and Tu-reen Afroz sought the sentence as they completed their argument separately against the accused.

The tribunal is hearing the closing

arguments in the case for the second time as the former chairman of Inter-national Crimes Tribunal 1 had gone into retirement before delivering the verdict.

On the third day of hearing, Ali ar-gued on � ve charges. On charge num-ber 16, which is related to intellectual killing, he read out the full deposition of Shyamoli Nasrin Chowdhury, wife of martyred intellectual Alim Chowd-hury.

On Tuesday, the tribunal asked Ali to close the arguments by 1pm includ-ing the submission of Tureen and oth-ers, if any. But he took the whole time alone and sought one more session for Syed Haider Ali. The tribunal then asked Haider to place his submission after Tureen since he was senior to her.

In the second session, Tureen ar-gued on three speci� c parts – respons-es to some questions that came up dur-ing the submission by Ali and by the

defence at di� erent times and the legal arguments on incitement and crimi-nal responsibility. After her two-hour submission she said: “Nizami was the ring leader of all the crimes committed by al-Badr and Islami Chhatra Sangha during Bangladesh’s Liberation War in 1971.”

She argued that Nizami had superi-or responsibility in committing crimes against humanity.

She also said the prosecution was

able to prove all the charges against Nizami and therefore, seeking highest punishment for him.

After her arguments, prosecutor Haider took part in the hearing. The tribunal then adjourned the hearing until today asking the defence to start placing their part of closing arguments in the case.

Meanwhile, the tribunal 2 yesterday adjourned the hearing in the trial of Syed Md Qaisar until today. l

Rape victim’s condition deterioratesn Mohammad Jamil Khan

The condition of a � ve-year-old rape victim of Mirpur yesterday was stated to be critical as the bleeding did not stop.

She is now undergoing treatment at the One-stop Crisis Centre (OCC) of Dhaka medical College Hospital.

“The condition of the girl has dete-riorated as bleeding did not stop. The organ was badly ruptured by torture,” Bilkis Begum, coordinator of the OCC, told the Dhaka Tribune. “Our special-ised doctors are doing their best to cure the child and we are hopeful about it.”

She said they would say clearly about the torture after getting result of the DNA test.

The child was admitted to the DMCH on Tuesday after she was al-legedly raped by the Arabic teacher of her school – Holy Crescent School and College. Police arrested the culprit, Minhaz Uddin, after the incident and veri� ed the arrestee by the victim.

Bail, remand rejected Police yesterday placed the accused

before the Chief Metropolitan Magis-trate’s Court seeking a � ve-day remand while the defence lawyer submitted bail prayer.

After a hearing, Judge Alamgir Kabir Raj rejecting the prayers sent the ac-cused to jail.

Accused Minhaz is the younger brother of Mesbah Uddin, principal of the school. l

Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina sits for a photo session with members of the joint governing body of the National Defence College and the Defence Services Command and Sta� College at Dhaka Cantonment yesterday PMO

News4 DHAKA TRIBUNE Thursday, March 13, 2014

City High Low

PRAYER TIMESFajar 4:54am

Sunrise 6:09amZohr 12:08am

Asr 4:27pmMagrib 6:07pm

Esha 7:22pmSource: IslamicFinder.org

WEATHER

Dry weather likely n UNB

Weather may remain mainly dry with temporary partly cloudy sky over the country with chances of light rain or thunder showers at one or two places over Rajshahi, Rangpur divisions and the regions of Tangail, Mymensingh and Sylhet until 6pm today.

Day and night temperatures might rise slightly over the country, Met Of-� ce said.

The sun sets in the capital at 6:07pm today and rises at 6:09am tomorrow.

Country’s highest temperature 33.5 degree Celsius was recorded in Rajsha-hi and Mongla and lowest 12.0 degrees in Srimangal yesterday.

Highest and lowest temperatures re-corded in some major cities yesterday were:

Dhaka 32.2 18.2 Chittagong 30.2 19.0Rajshahi 33.5 15.6 Rangpur 31.2 15.4 Khulna 32.3 19.5Barisal 33.0 18.4Sylhet 32.5 16.4 Cox’s Bazar 33.0 20.4

Bangladesh presses for ending violence against womenGender violence costing country 2% of total GDPn Sheikh Shahariar Zaman

With the backdrop of recent studies � nding that 87% married women in the country experience violence by their spouses, Bangladesh has been pressing for a stop to violence against women and the elimination of child marriage at the ongoing session of the Commission on Status of Women.

Bangladesh has put forward its pro-posal to the UN for post-2015 develop-ment agenda, which includes two goals on ensuring equal opportunity and bene� t for all women, and ensuring the role of women in decision-making process.

The matter will be discussed during the 58th session of the Commission on Status of Women that started on March 10 and will continue until March 21 in New York.

Speaking on the issue, Christine Hunter, country representative for UN Women Bangladesh, told the Dhaka Tribune: “I am really hoping that Ban-gladesh will continue to advocate for these positions.”

The session in New York creates a very good platform for advocacy, she said, adding that the conclusions agreed at the session were binding for all member countries.

About the role of women in deci-sion-making process, Hunter said: “We have taken some good steps, and now we have to take our next steps.”

Citing an example, she said out of 12 posts in the local government council, three were reserved for women.

“There are nine men on a council and each man covers one constituency. And those three women cover three of those. So constituencies covered by three men have to be covered by one woman, but her budget is same,” Hunt-

er pointed out.Saying the civil society and develop-

ment partners were concerned about reproductive health and rights issues, the UN o� cial added that although Bangladesh had done well in reducing maternal mortality, there was still more to do.

Child marriage was linked to early pregnancy and the chance of dying in childbirth was higher for young wom-en, she added.

If adolescents had the full under-standing and education about repro-ductive health, and were able to dis-cuss it with their parents and get the services they need, it would greatly help in reducing maternal mortality, Hunter said.

Recent studies had also found that the cost of violence against women constituted 2% of the total GDP in Ban-gladesh, while the country was ranked third in the world and � rst in Asia re-garding child marriage, with 65% wom-en being married before the age of 18.

She also said Bangladesh has achieved many of the Millennium De-velopment Goals despite being a poor country.

In the discussion on the post-2015 agenda, the Bangladesh government was making a strong point that the post-2015 goals have to be in equal part-nership between the wealthy and the poor countries, and that the wealthier countries would have to live up to their commitment, she said.

“We should invest the resources. These are important because if we be-lieve in human rights, we should not have people living in extreme poverty and destitution. We should not have people excluded from social processes; so, we need to invest on that,” Hunter added. l

BSF returns four children n Our Correspondent,

Chapainawabganj

The Indian Border Security Force re-turned four Bangladeshi children yes-terday, who were tra� cked to India through Sonamoshjid port in Chapain-awabganj district.

They were identi� ed as Masud Ali, 14, son of Ra� qul Islam, Imon Imam, 12, son of Iqbal Hossain of Sopura village, Abdul Zabbar, son of Rabiul Islam of Dinajpur district and Ripa Khatun,13, daughter of Abdul Khaleque of Mymensingh district.

The children remained imprisoned for 19 months to 36 months in Bohrom-pur Jail of India.

They were brought back to the country with the help of Jatiya Mohila Ainjibi Samity.

Authorities of Mohdipur Immigration in Maldohol district in India handed them over to authorities of Sonamoshjid Immigration.

BSF and BGB o� cers were present at that time.

The children would be handed over to their family members, said sources. l

HC orders to give passport to Moududn Tribune Report

The High Court yesterday ordered the director general of the immigration and passport o� ce to issue a machine read-able passport to BNP standing commit-tee member Moudud Ahmed within 48 hours.

The bench of Justice Quazi Reza-Ul Hoque and Justice ABM Altaf Hossain gave the ruling on a writ petition � led by the BNP leader as he was not given a passport in 72-hours after applying on February 24.

Last Thursday, the court issued a di-rective, which was made absolute yes-terday. l

Policeman's 'hired goons kill' wifen Our Correspondent, Rajbari

A case was � led yesterday with Rajbari sadar police station in connection with the alleged murder of a college girl on a Khulna-bound moving train onMarch 1.

Police have started to investigate the incident and the station’s O� cer-in-Charge Md Abdul Khaleque said they were trying to arrest the accused as soon as possible.

The college girl was killed allegedly by her husband’s hired goons after she was raped inside compartment No 5002 of Nokshikatha mail train. Sourc-es said she was going to a rally of BNP Chairperson Khaleda Zia.

The girl’s was Morzina Khatun, 20, daughter of Abdus Sukur Mandal of village Gangaprosadpur in Rajbari sa-

dar upazila. She was an HSC � nal year student of Rajbari Government Mohila College.

The victim’s uncle Ahamed Mandal said Morzina was married two years ago with police constable Mamun Mol-lah, son of Helal Uddin Mollah of vil-lage Rotondia in Kalukhali upazila of the district, after she passed her SSC examinations.

The uncle said Mamun was jobless when he married Morzina in exchange of Tk4.5 lakh as dowry. Mamun needed the money as bribe for getting a job in the police service, he added. Ahamed said Morzina’s husband now works as a police constable at Dhaka Metropolitan Police service, but denies he is married.

Family sources said Mamun had cut-o� relation with Morzina after get-ting the job in police. They claimed he

later hired goons to kill her.When contacted, Investigation Of-

� cer of the case Babon Uddin Mollah, sub-inspector of Rajbari Government Rail Police, said there was no doubt that miscreants killed Morzina after rape.

Police said when the train reached Pangsha Railway Station, railway po-lice found the compartment door locked. They later peeped inside the compartment through the window and saw a girl’s body hanging with the ceil-ing fan. They then broke the door and recovered the body.

After being informed, Mamun came to the victim’s house and asked Morzina’s father to dismiss the murder issue and o� ered him the dowry money back. As a result, the victim’s family could not � le any case in this connection from the day of the incident. l

Sayedee appeals case adjourned till April 1n Tribune Report

The Appellate Division of the Su-preme Court yesterday deferred the war crimes appeals case of death row convict Delawar Hossain Sayedee until April 1.

The � ve-member top court bench headed by Chief Justice Md Muzam-mel Hossain passed the order following a plea by Attorney General Mahbubey Alam.

The top law o� cer of the country told the court that as per the deposition of two eye-witnesses – Muken Chakrab-arty and Sukharanjan Bali, Sayedee had been involved in the killing of Bisabali.

So, the International Crimes tribunal 1 had handed down the death penalty rightly for the Jamaat-e-Islami leader,

he argued. On April 1, Mahbubey Alam would

place his arguments on the charge of killing Bisabali. Assistant Attorney General Bashir Ahmed assisted him during the hearing while SM Shahjahan represented Sayedee.

Arguments in the case began on January 28. The defence completed its part of arguments but would rebut the arguments made by the government, said Shahjahan.

The International Crimes Tribunal 1 gave death penalty to Sayedee on Feb-ruary 28 last year. The Jamaat leader on March 28 lodged an appeal with the apex court seeking acquittal. The government also registered an appeal to specify the punishment in all the six charges that were proved at the tribunal. l

A jubilant woman shows a victory sign in Dhanmondi yesterday after collecting her ticket for a concert that will celebrate the T20 World Cup DHAKA TRIBUNE

Garment worker Momena, who was injured in the Rana Plaza collapse, addresses a programme marking the International Women’s Day at the National Press Club yesterday NASHIRUL ISLAM

No third carrier for hajj � ights: Menonn Mohosinul Karim

No other airline except the � ag carriers of Bangladesh and Saudi Arabia would be allowed to carry hajj pilgrims this year, despite a recent High Court ruling to permit a third carrier, according to a decision by the civil aviation ministry.

Only Biman Bangladesh Airlines and Saudi Arabian Airlines would be permitted to operate hajj � ights, Civil Aviation and Tourism Minister Rashed Khan Menon told reporters yesterday.

“We want Biman and Saudia to carry pilgrims as it would be easy for us to deal with them. So, we have decided not to allow a third carrier. There will be no third carrier this year,” Menon added.

On July 29, the Hajj Agencies As-sociation of Bangladesh and a pilgrim jointly � led a writ petition challenging the legality of a similar government de-cision last year to allow only Biman and Saudia to carry pilgrims.

The High Court on February 20 de-clared the decision as illegal and ruled that pilgrims could choose any airline to go for hajj.

However, Menon said the govern-ment had obtained a stay order on the HC ruling after an appeal two weeks ago.

The minister, meanwhile, rejected a proposal to allow National Air Services (NAS Air), a Saudi state-owned airlines, to � y pilgrims.

Saudi Ambassador Abdullah bin Nasser Al Basiri made the o� er when he met the minister earlier at his secre-tariat o� ce in the capital.

“We have rejected their proposal to carry hajj pilgrims, as it is an ine� cient and irresponsible air agency. There are lots of allegations against the agency,” Menon said. “But they may be allowed to carry passengers for umrah. We will consider it,” he added.

According to the civil aviation min-istry, NAS Air had carried pilgrims in 2011 and 2012. But the pilgrims had to su� er long delays at Jeddah airport. They also faced problems after return-ing home as most of them lost their lug-gage. Thus, the ministry decided not to reassign the airlines for hajj � ights. l

RAB beats up mother of JCD leadern Our Correspondent, Lakshmipur

Members of Rapid Action Battalion yesterday allegedly beat up the mother of former Chhatra Dal leader Solaiman Uddin Zisan in Lakshmipur’s West Lat-ifpur village.

Zisan’s family members alleged that identifying themselves as RAB mem-bers they entered into the house and carried out vandalism in the name of searching Zisan.

They took away three mobile sets from the house, and hit Zisan’s mother on her face. They also threatened to break her hands and legs if she could not trace Zisan by today, Zisan’s moth-er Fatema Begum claimed.

Maj Shahed of RAB 11, however, said the law enforcers had conducted many drives to nab many notorious terror-ists, but there was no incident of mis-behaviour with old persons or with any family.l

Oxygen plant explosion kills 2n Our Correspondent, Narayanganj,

At least two workers were killed and 10 others injured in an oxygen plant explo-sion yesterday inside a rerolling factory in Barpa area in Narayanganj.

The deceased were identi� ed as Abu Zafar, 22, and Abdur Razzak, 23. The incident took place at 4pm inside the Ahmmad Rerolling Factory at Barpa, be-sides the Dhaka-Sylhet Highway.

OC of Rupganj police station Asa-duzzaman said they were investigating the matter.

l

5NewsDHAKA TRIBUNE Thursday, March 13, 2014

JnU students to organise rally on March 16n Mohammad Jamil Khan

The students and teachers of Jagannath University (JnU) announced to hold a rally in front of the central Shaheed Minar on March 16 to gather a mass support for their ongoing demonstration in retrieving their grabbed halls.

Shariful Islam, convener of the hall recovery committee and president of JnU Bangladesh Chhatra League, told the Dhaka Tribune that they had al-ready started campaigning and di� er-ent steps were taken to make the rally successful.

“All students, teachers and universi-ty sta� s are expected to join the rally,” he said, adding that the rally would de-stroy the strength of all the land grab-bers.

Students said though the movement to retrieve their halls began in 2005, this is the � rst they were going arrange a grand to press home their demands.

On the other hand, JnU Progressive

Students’ Alliance extended their sup-port and expressed solidarity with the ongoing students’ demo yesterday. Fol-lowing a rally in front of the JnU Liber-ation War Sculpture at 11am, they made the announcement.

The progressive students’ leaders also assured the students that they would lead the demo peacefully until the government met the demands.

JnU Chhatra Union President Jahid-ul Islam Sajib, Chhatra Font President Masud Rana, Chhatra Federation Pres-ident Tahmida Islam Tania, Chhatra League Secretary Shirajul Islam ad-dressed the rally among others.

Students of the university have been observing agitation programmes on the campus since February 12 this year, demanding recovery of halls which have been grabbed by vested interest group.

Education Minister Nurul Islam Na-hid has already assured the students of taking measures to recover the hall without any delay. l

Rajuk, IFC to work together to strengthen building safety in city n Tribune Report

The Rajdhani Unnayan Kartipaksha and the International Finance Corporation (IFC) have joined hands together to improve building safety standards by strengthening the construction permit approval process and related building inspection mechanisms.

Through a project, the IFC will sup-port Rajuk, development authority of the capital, to introduce third party in-spection for increasing safety, stream-lining existing laws, automating the construction permits issue process, and introducing digital signatures to reduce paperwork.

The project will actively encourage pro-environment green options to save water and energy at new buildings by incorporating green building measures in the construction regulations of Rajuk.

“Dhaka is densely populated and situated in an earthquake prone zone. Bringing down risk levels in buildings is crucial. To address global concerns around safety in buildings, we are keen to support strict enforcement of

building inspection and regulation of construction permits,” said Md Nurul Huda, Chairman of Rajuk.

Dhaka is one of the fastest growing cities in the world, and there is a need for more disciplined growth in the fu-ture for sustainable development, he added.

In a landmark move, the govern-ment has committed cash contribution to the project aiming to improve the country’s investment climate, , says a press release.

“IFC is committed to providing as-sistance to raise safety standards of buildings in Bangladesh.

Once factories and buildings are giv-en clearance using a thorough, fast and reliable system, investment con� dence in Bangladeshwill get a boost.

This will also help address con-cerns about unsafe infrastructure in the ready-made garment sector,” said Kyle F Kelhofer, IFC country manag-er.

IFC and International Labour Organ-isation are working together on a la-bour standards programme called Bet-ter Work, which focuses on improved buildings for worker security. l

DU students protest move to make Bangla, linguistics departments equaln DU Correspondent

Students of Bangla department of Dha-ka University staged demonstration in the campus yesterday protesting the recent decision jointly taken by the Ministry of Education and University Grants Commission (UGC) regarding approval of isometric status of linguis-tics students to that of Bangla.

Earlier yesterday morning, educa-tion ministry sent a letter to the Ban-gla Department saying DU linguistics department and Bangla Department were now equivalent and linguistics students could be considered for the post of teacher at Bangla department.

Around 500 students of Bangla De-partment started demonstration boycot-ting classes and brought out a procession from the pedestal of Aparajeyo Bangla

which marched di� erent streets of the campus. Then the agitated students held a protest rally at the base of Aparajeyo Bangla denouncing the decision adopted by education ministry and UGC.

Speakers at the rally said: “We (stu-dents of Bangla) have to face exams amounting to 3000 marks to complete our degree in Bangla. To the contrary, linguistics students have to face only 100 marks of examination related to our course. Of course the two courses cannot be counted as equal. We will never com-ply with education ministry’s decision.”

They urged the Education Minister to withdraw the decision as early as possible and announced to form a hu-man chain at Aparejeyo Bangla today.

The agitated students also an-nounced to wage tougher programmes if their rational demands were no met

immediately. When contacted with Prof Shoumitro Shekhor, faculty mem-ber of Bangla Department said the stu-dents of the two departments have to follow di� erent types of syllabi, so it is not a wise decision by the UGC and Ed-ucation Ministry.”

S M Sadik, a master’s student from Bangla department told the Dhaka Tri-bune that it was a ridiculous decision by the authority and we want immedi-ate cancellation of that decision.

Meanwhile, teachers of the Bengla Department and Prof Emeritus Anisu-zzaman also expressed their solidarity with the protesters. “Two departments, Bangla and Linguistics, are important in their respective sectors, so UGC should not bring any undue change in the course and curriculum of the subjects,” said Prof Anisozzaman. l

Bench assistants demonstrate, halt court activities in Chittagong n Tarek Mahmud, Chittagong

A half-day work abstention by bench assistants of Chittagong courts protest-ing the alleged assault on a colleague by some lawyers halted judicial activ-ities for nearly four hours in the port city yesterday.

The protesters locked the doors of the court rooms, preventing sched-uled hearings from taking place and causing inconvenience to justice seek-ers, especially those from remote ar-eas, sources said.

“Several lawyers locked into an altercation with Md Kefayetullah,  a bench assistant of the Seventh Chittagong Metropolitan Session Judge Court, at the Chittagong District Bar Association’s office and

physically assaulted him on Tuesday evening over a trifling matter,” claimed Omar Fuad, bench assistant of Chittagong Metropolitan Session Judge Court. 

The bench assistants started their protest at 9am by locking the entries to 20 courts, including the Metropolitan Session Judge and Chief Metropolitan Magistrate courts.

The protesters, however, unlocked the court rooms in the afternoon fol-lowing discussions with judges and lawyers. But judicial proceedings could not resume for the day in most of the courts, the sources added.

The bench assistances ended their protest and unlocked the court rooms around 1pm after a meeting with Metropolitan Session Judge SM

Mojibur Rahman and leaders of the bar association.  

“We withdrew the demonstration responding to the judge, but our move-ment will continue,” said Omar Fuad. 

Meanwhile, lawyers demanding a stop to alleged irregularities by bench assistants also brought out a proces-sion at the court premises around noon yesterday.

Abdur Rashid, general secretary of the bar association, said the bench as-sistants staged the protest without any prior notice and caused su� erings to justice seekers.

“If they have any objection, they could lodge a complaint,” Rashid said, adding that both sides came to an agreement through the intervention of Mojibur Rahman. l

DU reshu� es pre-convocation schedules n Tribune Report

Dhaka University authorities changed their schedule for providing invitation papers and gowns for the participants of the 48th convocation of the univer-sity.

Participants can now collect all nec-essary stu� from 10am till 4pm on April 4 and 5 and from 10am to 1pm on April 6, said a university press release.

The invitation papers and gowns would be available in the Social Science Faculty Building, Science Cafeteria, Curzon Hall, Business Studies Facul-ty Building and TSC (Teacher-Student Centre).

However the date of the convoca-tion remained unchanged as it would be held on the Central Playground of the university on April 7. l

A labourer is involved in renovation work on Aparajeya Bangla at Dhaka University yesterday SYED ZAKIR HOSSAIN

Minister for Cultural A� airs along with other guests are seen at the inaugural function of the two-day dialogue titled ‘Creative Bangladesh-Hard Skills and Soft Skills’ at a city hotel yesterday. The British Council has organised the event MAHMUD HOSSAIN OPU

Kaliakoir hi-tech park gets another 40.5 hectare landn Muhammad Zahidul Islam

Prime minister’s telecommunication and ICT Adviser Sajeeb Wazed Joy yes-terday announced to increase the area of the country’s � rst hi-tech park at Ka-liakoir, Gazipur by another 40.47 hect-are (100 acre).

The area of the park, which was started about 15 years ago in 1999 and is still to be completed, will now stand at 332 acre.

After a visit to the project site, Joy expressed dissatisfaction at the slow progress but said the park would be completed within the term of the pres-ent government.

“I have been satis� ed with the prog-ress of other telecommunication and ICT projects over the past � ve years, but I have only one frustration, and that is this [Kaliakoir hi-tech] project,” said Joy, son of Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina.

He said: “We do not want a hi-tech factory…We want a software park

where only software and service relat-ed work will go on. We do not expect the hi-tech park to become an EPZ.”

The tech park has progressed very little in the past 15 years since the proj-ect was conceived, and o� cials con-cerned blame frequent shifts in govern-ment’s decision and the World Bank’s intervention for this.

In 1999, the then prime minister Sheikh Hasina decided to establish the park on 232 acres of land of the Kalia-koir Surface Satellite Station. But the following four-party alliance govern-ment did not carry on with the proj-ect. The then science, information and communications technology ministry initiated a new project at Kaliakoir in 2004, but it did nothing more than ac-quiring land.

Project o� cials concerned alleged that the World Bank, which is � nancing Tk200 crore in the project, had often caused problems by interrupting decisions.

Joy said if the World Bank refused

to provide funds for these projects, the government would � nance those from its own sources. “The World Bank gives us money and we repay it. It has been their habit to impose conditions. But Bangladesh is not a country of beggars, it is going ahead,” said Joy.

After the army-backed caretaker government took new initiative in Sep-tember 2007, the construction work of the project started, building basic infra-structure at a cost of Tk24.4 crore.

In 2010, the government declared it as a high-priority project and estab-lished the Bangladesh Hi-tech Park Au-thority.

In 2012, it decided to implement the project through public-private part-nership and the Kuala Lumpur-based Kulim Technology Park Corporation became the top bidder in an interna-tional tender.

In February 2013, the government approved the Tk2.26 billion project and in November the High Court stayed the

appointment of a developer following a petition.

On January 28 this year, the govern-ment � led an appeal with the Appellate Division against the High Court order and got the verdict in its favour.

In the meantime, the cabinet decid-ed to invite a re-tender for the project.

Talking to the Dhaka Tribune on Tuesday, Project Director ANM Sa� qul Islam expressed hope that the work of the Kaliakoir hi-tech park would go on smoothly from now.

Junaid Ahmed Palak, state minister for ICT Division, said: “We are not set-ting any deadline but the implemen-tation work of the project has already started.”

Post, Telecommunications and In-formation Technology Minister Abdul Latif Siddique, Railway Minister Md Muzibul Hoque, Junaid Ahmed Palak and acting secretary of the ICT Division Kamal Uddin Ahmed accompanied Joy during his visit. l

DU student torture case deposition recordedn Md Sanaul Islam Tipu

A Dhaka court yesterday recorded the deposition of Dhaka University student Abdul Kader, against former OC Helal Uddin, in a case � led against the police o� cial for torturing Kader, then mas-ter’s student of biochemistry.

Metropolitan Magistrate Alamgir Kabir Raj recorded the statement and � xed April 6 for next prosecution witnesses.

During the deposition, Kader de-scribed before the court how Helal brutally tortured him in custody and implicated him in false cases.

Helal was present before the court during the recording.

According to the statement, some plainclothes policemen held him in Segunbagicha on July 16, 2011 while he was returning to his dormitory, Fazlul

Huq Hall, from a relative’s house at Es-katon. Later, Helal took him to his of-� ce room. Helal beat up Kader severely to make a confessional statement.

As he denied to give confessional statement, Helal hacked him below his knee with a sharp weapon.

Then, police lodged two separate cases against him one for robbery and another for possessing illegal � rearm.

He was also shown arrested in an-other false case � led with Mohammad-pur police station for carjacking.

Teachers and students of DU and people from di� erent walks of life pro-tested the torture.

He was freed on bail on August 3, 2011, after 18 days of his detention. The court also acquitted him from the cases.

Later, police submitted charge sheet before the court against Helal. l

6 NationDHAKA TRIBUNE Thursday, March 13, 2014

Government of the People’s Republic of BangladeshLocal Government Engineering Department,

Offi ce of the Upazila Engineer,Boalmari, Faridpur.

INVITATION FOR TENDER (CIVIL WORKS)TENDER NOTICE NO. 04/2013-2014

Memo No: LGED/U.E/Boal/Farid/2014/186 Dated: 12/03/2014

Sealed Tenders are hereby invited from the eligible tenderers as defi ned in the tender document for the under mentioned work as per terms and condition below:

01 Project Name NEED BASED REPAIR02 Source of funds GOB03 Procurement Method Limited Tender Method (LTM)Enlisted Contractors of LGED under LTM shall

be participated in this Notice.04 List of workSL No

Package No. Name of work Estimate Cost (Tk)

Amount of Tender

security (Tk)

Price of tender

documents

Time for Completion

1 2 3 4 5 6 701. FRD/BOAL(URC)

/01/2013-2014Repair of Upazila Resource Centre(URC) under Boalmari Upazila, Dist. Faridpur

2,00,000.00 5500.00 250.00 60 days

02 Date, time & place of pre-tender meeting

Date : 20/03/2014Time : 11.00 AMPlace : Offi ce of the undersigned

03 Last date, time & places of selling tender document

Date : 06/04/2014Time : 5.00 PMPlaces : a) offi ce of the undersigned b) offi ce of the Executive Engineer, LGED, Faridpur c) Offi ce of the Upazila Engineer, LGED, Alfadanga, Faridpur.

04 Last date, time & place of receiving tender

Date : 07/04/2014Time : 1.00 PMPlaces : a) offi ce of the undersigned b) offi ce of the Executive Engineer, LGED, Faridpur c) Offi ce of the Upazila Engineer, LGED, Alfadanga, Faridpur.

05 Date, time & place of Opening tender

Date : 07/04/2014Time : At 3.00 PMPlace : Offi ce of the undersigned.

06 Only Tenderers enlisted in the districts under LGED Region, Faridpur (Dist: Faridpur, Rajbari, Gopalgonj, Madaripur & Shariatpur) are eligible.

07 According to the Gazette published of PPR-2006, Rules No.24 Clause 19(Revised) The Tender Price should not be more.

08 Than 5% (Five Percent) less or 5% (Five Percent) above than the Offi cial Estimated Cost. Failing which the tender shall be rejected.

09 Tender shall be valid for a period of 60 days after tender opening and must be accompanied by the tender security specifi ed above. Interested tenderers may obtain further information from the offi ce of the undersigned and purchase the tender documents in cash/treasury chalan/bank draft form the places mentioned above. The tenderer or their authorizes representatives are allowed to attend the opening of tenders. The authority reserves the right to accept or reject any or all the tenders with assigning any reasons whatsoever.

Upazila Engineer LGED, BoalmariGC-28/14(10"×4) Faridpur

20 years on, a school yet to get electricity Students of Nachol Madhabpur Government Primary Schhol become exhausted while attending classes in summer n Our Correspondent,

Chapainawabganj

Students of Nachol Madhabpur High School in Chapainawabganj fear they have to su� er a lot in the coming days as the summer season is nearer.

The students, especially in sum-mer, can neither concentrate on study nor feel comfort during school hours as their school has remained without electricity since its inception in 1994. No one knows when, if ever, they will get a power connection.

Many students return home after becoming sick after school hours. And for that reason, attendance of students remains thin from April to September as students do not feel like going to school.

Although the school, surprisingly,

has got 12 fans, computers, laptops from District education o� ce, there is no use for them for lack of electricity connection.

The country is now resounding with the aim of achieving digital Bangladesh by 2021. But the word “Digital Bangladesh” still remains a farce for these students since they cannot even turn on a computer.

Headmaster of the school Ataur Rahman said, “The authorities are not providing us electricity connection for lack of three poles.”

He said they had applied to the Ru-ral Electri� cation Board (REB) several times to bring them under electri� ca-tion, but the authorities did not pay heed to their demand.

An electrician of the REB set up ca-bles in the school 10 years ago, but that

is all the work that had been done so far, he said with frustration.

A few teams from both the educa-tion o� ce and the REB visited the school several times, but no progress has been made.

During the 10th national parliamen-tary election and fourth phase of upa-zila polls, the authorities of the REB connected the school with electricity, but the connection was snapped the next day of the election.

When contacted, General Manager of Rural Electri� cation Board (REB) said, “I am going to USA. Steps will be taken after I come back to the country.”

Since its establishment in 2004, the school (from class VI-X) was listed for MPO (Monthly Pay Order). The number of stu-dents at the school is 300.l

7-month ban on vessel service on risky routes from tomorrow n Our Correspondent, Barisal

The seven-month-long restriction on plying of passenger carrying water transports, including launches and trawlers, on risky four routes in the Meghna River estuary and coastal areas will come into e� ect from Friday.

The restriction was imposed by ship-ping ministry from March 15 to Octo-ber 15  because of nor’wester, cyclone and storm during the monsoon in the river estuaries and coastal belts in the southern region,  said Maruf Hossain, inspector, shipping directorate o� ce in Barisal.

The routes touching major stations are Shabajpur, Mozuchowdhurir Hat, Daulatkhan, Mirzakalu, Char Alexander, Serajganj, Shashiganj, Betua, Aslampur, Buriabon, Barguna, Patharghata, Baro

Machuakati on Meghna, Ilisha, Kocha, Baleswar, Bishkhali, Tentulia and Bura Gourango.

The  210-day restriction was � rst imposed  by the sea transportation directorate on June 18, 2000  following some fatal launch and trawler accidents in previous      years in the areas on about 3000 kilometers long routes which touched at least 26 stations, said Mahruf.

“This region is vulnerable due to natural calamities like cyclone, storm and nor-wester,” said Abul Bashar Ma-jumdar, deputy director, BIWTA and river safety and tra� c management in-charge of Barisal port.

“The ban, without an arrangement of alternative transportation will con� ne a large number of people to islands and endanger their lives because of travel by

unsafe small transports,” he said.Md Shahidullah, Barisal river port of-

� cer and deputy director BIWTA, said the ban on plying passenger transports without having valid license or sea-survey � tness was to save the life of the travellers.

“Considering the shortage of ves-sels in the danger zone during the time, we were trying to manage four BIWTC sea trucks soon,” said Gopal Chandra Majumdar, assistant manager, BIWTC Barisal station.

Sea trucks named-ST Shahid Fazlul Huq Moni on Char Alexandar-Mirzakalu route, ST Sukanta Babu/Sheikh Kamal on Manpura-Shashiganj route, ST Kh-izir-7 on Ilisha-Maju Chowdhury route and ST Khizir-8 on Barisal-Maju Chowd-hury route would be placed on the dan-ger-zone areas, he said. l

Rail links in Dinajpur halted for 2 hrs n Our Correspondent, Dinajpur

Train communications between Di-najpur-Khulna and Dinajpur-Rajshahi came to a halt for about two hours yes-terday as some train masters went on a sudden strike protesting the attack on two of their colleagues by smugglers.

Parbatipur Station Master Sheikh Abdul Jabbar said a gang of smugglers, who were in guise of passengers, beat up Rajshahi bound train Uttara Mail’s master Mozammel Hoque and his as-

sistant Abdul Jalil in Bagdanga area in Jessore around 6:00am when they didn’t stop the train as per signal of some accomplices of the gang down here to carry Indian smuggled goods, leaving the former injured.

Later, Mozammel was admitted to Joypurhat Sadar Hospital.

Angered by the attack, about 8-10 locomotive masters from the station went on a � ash work abstention stop-ping train communications on the routes from around 7:25am.

However, the train communications resumed as the higher authorities as-sured the agitating masters of taking legal actions against the culprits.

Due to the strike, Rajshahi bound “Borendra Express” and Khulna bound “Rupsha Express” stopped on the way, creating su� ering to the commuters

Emdadul Haque, inspector of Hakimpur government railway police (GRP), said they arrested two people in connection with the incident and try-ing to nab the rest culprits. l

Five houses gutted in Chittagongn CU Correspondent

At least � ve houses were gutted in sep-arate � re incidents at city’s Baizid area and Hathazari upazila yesterday.

Fire service sources said two semi-pucca houses in Hamidpur area under Baizid police station were gutted in the city.

The � re originated from an electric short circuit at 10am.

On information, � re� ghters from Baizid Fire Service Station went to the spot and doused the � re after an hour of hectic e� ort.

In another incident, three semi-puc-ca houses were gutted at Banikpara area in Nandirhat under Hathazari upazila. l

Two HSC examinees go missing in Barisaln Our correspondent, Barisal

Two higher secondary certi� cate ex-aminees of Agorpur Degree College went missing since Tuesday evening from Sharikal area under Gournadi upazila of Barisal.

The victims were identi� ed as Kazi Shahriar Anik, son of Aktaruzzaman, and Sohag Khan, son of rickshaw van driver Shahid Khan and both of them hailed from Mahisha village under Shari-kal union of Gournadi upazila.

Aktaruzzaman, a teacher of Agorpur Degree College, told his son and Sohag were friends and HSC examinees of Agorpur Degree College.

Abul Kalam, o� cer- in-charge of Gournadi police station, said Anik’s fa-ther lodged a general diary in connec-tion with the missing of the two youths in yesterday morning and then it was turned into a kidnapping case in the same afternoon.

Both of the victims went for a stroll on Tuesday evening and subsequently went missing since that night. Anik’s mother claimed that she received a cell phone

call from her son around 2:20am early yesterday, told Sub-Inspector Ahsan Ka-bir, investigating o� cer of the case.

Anik hurriedly informed her that uni-denti� ed people riding on a motor ve-hicle at Sakokati rickshaw stand asked them to show the way to Sharikal and they became senseless after that.

They found that they were taken hos-tage by those unknown people when they regained sense. Anik switched o� the phone telling hurriedly that he se-cretly called her mother and those peo-ple might their hear conversation, the IO said.

Police were trying to trace the call phone call and arrest those unknown kidnappers to recover the missing youths, he said. l

Madrasa student dies falling from rooftop n CU Correspondent

A student was killed falling o� from the rooftop of a one-storied madarasa building at Patiya upazila in Chittagong yesterday afternoon.

The deceased, Md Khokon, 12, son of Osi Ahmed, of Dakbarunpara at An-wara upazila, was a class IV student at Shah Akbariya Dakhil Madrasha at Hay-idgaon of the upazila, said police.

Khokon was slipped ‘accidentally’ while he was walking alone on the rooftop of the madrasa building and fall down around 2:30pm, said Sub-In-spector Jahirul Islam, o� cer-in-charge of Chittagong Medical College Hospital police outpost.

Later, the student was rushed to upazila health complex and shifted to CMCH in critical condition where the on duty doctors of doctors pronounced his death, he said. l

Man to die for killing wifen Our Correspondent, Gazipur

A Gazipur court yesterday awarded death penalty to an accused in the Fatema murder case in Gazipur.

Fatema Nazib, judge of Gazipur Women and Children Repression (Prevention) Tribunal, passed the verdict.

According to case statement, Faruq bashed his wife Fatema’s head with bricks before his two sons for not pro-viding dowry on October 29, 2011. The incident occurred at the roof of a hospi-tal. On that night, Fatema succumbed to her injuries.

Deceased’s mother Khodeza Begum � led a case with Tongi police station in this regard.

Around seven witnesses, includ-ing Fatema’s two sons Sakib and Rakib gave deposition before the court. Fol-lowing the hearing, the court gave the verdict.

However, Faruq has been abscond-ing after getting bail three months ago.

Fatema’s relatives and Special Public Prosecutor of the tribunal Shahjahan Mia expressed content on the verdict. l

A kitchen market is set up on the premises of Kamarol Government Primary School, hampering educational activities DHAKA TRIBUNE

Police were trying to trace the call phone call and arrest those unknown kidnappers to recover the missing youths

n Abdullah Al Arif

In Bangladesh, we have a vast number of archaeological sites and monuments, mostly belonging to the medieval period. Paharpur Buddhist Vihara of Naogaon, Lalbagh Fort of Dhaka, Shait-Gumbad Mosque of Bagherhat, Kantanagar Temple of Dinajpur and the historic city of Sonargaon near Dhaka are the major archeological sites in Bangladesh.

Department of Archeology is the concerned authority for the preservation, presentation and promotion of our glori-ous cultural heritage. At present the department owns 448 heritage sites. Many of these archeological sites and monu-ments are at stake due to lack of proper preservation and management.

Legal protection of national heritageArticle 24 of the constitution of Bangladesh says that the state shall adopt measures for the protection against dis-� gurement, damage or removal of all monuments, objects or places of special artistic or historic importance or inter-est. We also have the Antiquities Act, 1968 that provides the modes of protection and preservation of things which are part of our national history and heritage.

Antiquity The law terms the archeological sites and monuments as an-tiquities. They include:l Any ancient product of human activity, movable or im-

movable, illustrative of art, architecture, craft, custom, literature, morals, politics, religion, warfare, science or of any aspect of civilisation or culture

l Any ancient object or site of historical, ethnographical, anthropological, military or scienti� c interest

l Any other ancient object or class of such objects declared as an antiquity by the government.

Immovable antiquity Immoveable antiquity means an antiquity of any of the fol-lowing descriptions:l Any archaeological deposits on land or under waterl Any archaeological mound, tumulus, burial place or place

of interment, or any ancient garden, structure, building, erection or other work of historical, archaeological, mili-tary or scienti� c interest

l Any rock, cave or other natural object of historical, ar-chaeological, artistic or scienti� c interest or containing sculpture, engraving, inscription or painting of such in-terest, and includes any gate, door, window, panelling dados, ceiling, inscription, wall-painting, wood work, iron work or sculpture or other thing which is attached or fastened to an immovable antiquity

Advisory committeeThe law provides for an advisory committee to be constitut-ed by the government consisting of a director, who shall also be its chairman, two members of parliament and three other persons having special knowledge of antiquities.

Dispute as to whether any product is an antiquityIf any question arises whether any product, object or site is an antiquity within the meaning of the law, it shall be referred to the government and the government shall decide the question after consultation with the advisory committee.

Custody, preservation of ownerless antiquity Where the director has any information on the discovery or existence of an antiquity of which there is no owner, she/he shall take such necessary steps for the safe custody, preser-vation and protection of the antiquity.

Penalty for counterfeiting of antiquity If any person counterfeits, or commits forgery in respect of any antiquity with intent to commit fraud shall be punish-able with imprisonment for a term which may extend to six months, or with � ne, or with both.

Dealing in antiquitiesNo person shall deal in antiquities except under and in accor-dance with a licence granted by the director and every dealer shall maintain a register in such manner and form as the di-

rector may prescribe from time to time. Any persons contra-vening this provision shall be punishable with imprisonment which may extend to six months, or with � ne, or with both.

Export of antiquityNo person shall export any antiquity except under a licence granted by the director for the temporary export of antiqui-ties for the purpose of exhibition, examination or treatment for preservation. One can export antiquities in accordance with agreement with foreign licensees for archaeological ex-ploration and excavations within the term of their licences. Moreover, the director may give licence for the export of an-tiquities which are not of a unique nature in exchange for antiquities of any foreign country.

All antiquities the export of which is prohibited under the law shall be deemed to be goods of which the export has been prohibited under section 16 of the Customs Act, 1969 and all the provisions of that Act shall have e� ect accord-ingly, except that the antiquity in respect of which the provi-sions of that Act have been contravened shall be con� scated where con� scation is authorised under that Act.

Prohibition of movement of antiquityNo person shall transport an antiquity from one place in Bangladesh to another with the object of exporting it in con-travention of the law. Whoever violates the provision shall be punishable with imprisonment for a term which may ex-tend to three months, or with � ne, or with both.

Prohibition of archaeological excavation without licence No person shall make any excavation on any land for archaeological purposes except under and in accordance

with a licence granted by the director.A licence under this provision, in respect of any land shall

not be granted to any person other than the owner of the land except in accordance with the terms of an agreement with the owner. Any such agreement may contain the fol-lowing terms and conditions:l The restriction of the owner's rights in respect of the use

and occupation of such landl The compensation or any other consideration to be paid

to the ownerl Any other matter connected with the use of the land for

the purpose of such excavation

A licence under this provision shall not be refused to an owner if he undertakes to carry on the excavation in such manner that it will not result in the loss of archaeological or historical material which in the national interest should be preserved. Whoever contravenes the provisions shall be punishable with imprisonment for a term which may extend to one year, or with � ne, or with both.

Prohibition of making copies of protected antiquities without licence No person shall, for any commercial purpose, make a cine-matograph � lm of any protected antiquity or any part there-of except under and in accordance with a licence granted by the director.

Right of access to protected immovable antiquities Subject to the provisions of this Act the public shall have a right of access to any immovable antiquity maintained by the government. l

n Juris Desk

The concept of equality for women is tradition-ally understood to mean “the right to be equal to men.” This becomes problematic when it is extended to the understanding that women must be treated exactly like men if they are to gain

equality with men. It implies that women must be treated according to male standards, obscuring the ways in which women are di� erent from men and how they will be disad-vantaged because of these di� erences.

Initiatives for the realisation of women’s rights need to compensate for or cater to the di� erence, disparity or disadvantage, rather than a “one size � ts all” approach. It means taking into account the ways in which women are di� erent from men, and ensuring that these di� erences are acknowledged and responded to by state measures toward achieving equality. Furthermore, real equality goes beyond formal (de jure) equality – women and men must be equal in fact (de facto) as in law.

Substantive equality and differenceThe Convention on Elimination of all Forms of Discrimination Against Women (CEDAW) promotes the substantive equality model and consolidates two central approaches to equality:l Equality of opportunity in terms and access to the

resources of a country, to be secured by a framework of laws and policies, and supported by institutions and mechanisms for their operation.

l Equality of results upon access and opportunity, toward achieving real change for women. State parties to CEDAW have a responsibility to ensure the practical realisation of rights, and are thus obliged to show results.

The concept of substantive equality arose out of the recognition that formal equality may not be su� cient to ensure that women enjoy the same rights as men. An ostensibly gender-neutral policy, while not excluding women per se, may result in a de facto discrimination against women. It does not consider:

l Sex or biological di� erences whereby, for example, women bear children, not men.

l Gender di� erences or socially-created di� erences

resulting in norms and assumptions about women and men’s roles in society, and their capability and need. This in turn in� uences both policy-making and its implementation.

Di� erences between women and men whether based on biological (sex) di� erence or socially created (gender) di� erences results in women’s asymmetrical experience of:l Disparity, andl Disadvantage

Responding to gender differenceApproaches that take into account di� erences between women and men may not all be immediately favourable to women. In fact, they could be discriminatory in e� ect, if not in intention. To be able to intervene e� ectively in favour of women’s equality, it is important to have a conceptually sound understanding of what or why di� erences exist between women and men.

There are two ways of responding to gender di� erences in policy or approach:l The protectionist approach which, while recognising

di� erences, seeks to curtail or curb women’s activities or freedoms with the rationale that the aim is to “protect” women from harm or wrongdoing. This approach does not challenge gender discrimination, but reproduce it in the guise of protecting women.

l The corrective or substantive approach which recognises that in order to redistribute bene� ts equally between women and men, measures to promote women’s rights must transform the unequal power relations between women and men in the process. There should not only be equal opportunities for women but also equal access to those opportunities.

The substantive equality approach recognises that women and men cannot be treated the same, and for equality of results to occur, women and men may need to be treated di� erently.

The challenge is to know when to take note of di� erence, and to decide on appropriate measures for di� erent treatment that will facilitate equal access, control and equal result. Such measures will have to be assessed to ensure they promote autonomy rather than protection or dependency. This has to be done without compromising the claim for equal rights and equality as a legal standard. l

JurisDHAKA TRIBUNE Thursday, March 13, 2014 7

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JURIS QUOTE

Laws are generally foundto be nets of such a texture as the little creep through, the great break through, and the middle size are alone entangled in.

William ShenstoneEnglish poet(1714 – 1763)

Preserving our national heritageAntiquities Act, 1968 is the applicable law in this regard

Substantive approach to gender equality

NASHIRUL ISLAM

RIO SHUVO

BIGSTOCK

Thursday, March 13, 2014DHAKA TRIBUNE World8

EU approves framework and wording for sanctions on Russian Reuters

EU member states have agreed the wording of sanctions on Russia, includ-ing travel restrictions and asset freezes against those responsible for violating the sovereignty of Ukraine, according to a draft document seen by Reuters.

The seven-page document describes in detail the restrictive measures to be taken against Moscow if it does not re-verse course in Crimea and begin talks with international mediators on e� orts to resolve the crisis over Ukraine.

If approved by EU foreign ministers at a meeting on Monday, they would be the � rst sanctions imposed by the Eu-ropean Union against Russia since the end of the Cold War, marking a severe deterioration in East-West relations.

“Member states shall take the nec-essary measures to prevent the entry into, or transit through, their territo-ries of the natural persons responsible for actions which undermine or threat-en the territorial integrity, sovereignty and independence of Ukraine,” reads Article 1 of the document.

The second article covers assets held in the European Union and states that “all funds and economic resources be-longing to, owned, held or controlled” by those responsible for actions which

have undermined Ukraine’s integrity “shall be frozen.”

The document was approved by what is known as a silence procedure after no EU member states raised ob-jections to the wording by 1100 GMT on Wednesday, o� cials said.

EU foreign ministers meet in Brus-sels on Monday and are expected to for-mally sign o� on the restrictions, unless there is a dramatic change of course by Russia. That seems unlikely, with no indication of any ‘de-escalation’ in Crimea. A referendum in Crimea on Sunday is expected to see the region vote in favor of secession from Ukraine to join Russia, adding weight to calls for an international response.

Names still neededWhile the EU has agreed the wording for its sanctions, it is still working on the names of those to be targeted.

Discussions took place in London on Tuesday, when o� cials from Britain, the United States, Italy, France, Germa-ny, Switzerland, Japan and elsewhere met to discuss the issue.

“My understanding is that there was detailed discussion of names at the meeting,” an EU o� cial said. “No de� nitive list has been drawn up, but it will be ready by Monday.”

European o� cials have indicated that Russian President Vladimir Putin and his foreign minister, Sergei Lavrov, will not be on the list, so that channels of com-munication can be kept open and further escalation is possible at a later date.

Instead the list - an annex to the sanctions document seen by Reuters - is expected to focus on targets close to Pu-tin in the security services and military establishment as well as on prominent members of the Russian parliament.

“The annex shall also contain, where available, the information nec-essary to identify the natural or legal persons, entities or bodies concerned,” reads the sanctions framework.

“With regard to legal persons and entities, such information may include names, place and date of registration, reg-istration number and place of business.”

The EU and United States are coor-dinating on imposing the restrictions and have encouraged other countries, including Canada, Japan, Turkey and Switzerland, to take similar measures to maximize the impact.

If Russia does not respond to the pressure, the EU has said it is pre-pared to take further steps, probably involving an arms embargo and other trade-related measures. It could also apply sanctions on Putin himself. l

Israel passes law to conscript ultra-Orthodox Jewsn AFP, Jerusalem

Israeli MPs on Wednesday voted through a law which will compel ul-tra-Orthodox Jews to either serve in the military or perform national civil-ian service.

The bill was voted through by 65 to 1 in a poll broadcast on Israel’s parlia-mentary television channel.

The lone dissenting vote was cast by an MP from the far-right Jewish Home who broke coalition discipline to oppose the law. Opposition parties within the 120-seat parliament had earlier announced they would not participate in the vote.

The cabinet last year agreed to end a practice under which tens of thousands of ultra-Orthodox were exempted from military service if they were in full-time study at a Jewish seminary, or yeshiva.

The new legislation stipulates that ultra-Orthodox men must either join

the army or perform civilian service, in a law which will go into force in 2017.

The law also includes a clause stip-ulating sanctions against draft dodgers – including imprisonment – in a move which has enraged the ultra-Orthodox leadership who said it would be tanta-mount to jailing people for practising their faith.

Military service is compulsory in Is-rael, with men serving three years and women two.

Earlier this month, more than 300,000 ultra-Orthodox took to the streets of Jerusalem in a mass prayer vigil to protest against the impending legislation.

The new law is seen by many Israelis as amending the historic injustice of an exemption handed to the ultra-Ortho-dox in 1948, when Israel was created. At that time they were a small segment of society. l

US death row inmate free after 30 years in jailn AFP, Washington

A man who spent 30 years on death row in Louisiana has walked free after a court threw out his murder conviction.

Glenn Ford, 64, one of the lon-gest-serving death row prisoners in the United States, was ordered to be released after new information cleared him of a 1983 murder. “My mind’s going all kinds of directions, but it feels good,” Ford told reporters outside the Louisiana State Penitentiary after his release Tuesday, ac-cording to CNN a� liate WAFB.

Ford, an African-American who had been on death row since 1984 after his conviction by an all-white jury, said he has missed out on much of his life. “My sons, when I left, was babies. Now they grown men with babies.”

A judge ordered that Ford be freed after prosecutors petitioned the court to release him, said the Capital Post Conviction Project of Louisiana.

New information corroborated what Ford has maintained all along: that he was not present at nor involved in the November 1983 slaying of a jeweler. l

No solutions in sight as Syria war enters fourth year

n AFP, Paris

The Syrian con� ict has claimed more than 140,000 lives, nearly half of the population is displaced, the rebellion has been hijacked by jihadists and President Bashar al-Assad is still � rmly in the saddle.

As the war rages into its fourth year and with no diplomatic and military solutions in sight, world powers ap-pear at a loss as to how to deal with what has now joined the alarming club of “intractable con� icts,” according to Chatham House think tank researcher Christopher Phillips.

And as the international community shifts its focus onto the crisis in Ukraine, the dragging con� ict – which has pitted Assad’s traditional ally Russia against the West – now risks being put aside.

“It’s quite tragic that Ukraine is hap-pening at this moment when Syria can ill-a� ord to have attention elsewhere but it is almost inevitable that the longer it goes on, the more people will be dis-tracted and begin to view Syria as some-thing that can’t be � xed,” Phillips said.

Peace talks in Geneva in January and February that for the � rst time brought representatives of the regime and the opposition to the table together failed to yield concrete results.

US Secretary of State John Kerry, one of the main players in Geneva, de-fended the talks by asking: “How many years did the Vietnam talks take? How many years did Dayton take in Bos-nia-Herzegovina?.”

But there is a rising feeling that it will take years for the crisis to be resolved.

To further complicate matters, the West has become increasingly wary of the opposition after the emergence of Al-Qae-da-linked Islamist � ghters in its ranks.

In� ghting and factionalism within the moderate wing of the opposition has not helped either.

The West wants “neither Assad nor the Islamists,” a European diplomatic source said.

Western nations have also been alarmed by the growing number of ji-hadists from their countries going to � ght in Syria whom they fear could pose huge security threats if they re-turned as battle-hardened veterans.

‘War will go on for 10 years’ “The longer the war is going on and the more the sort of Al-Qaeda type groups have emerged in the opposition-held northern parts of Syria, the more it has become a security concern,” Phillips said.

“That’s why it’s begun to prompt some to say: ‘Well actually we should accept Bashar al-Assad in power and actually support his government indi-rectly to contain that sort of security

threat of Al-Qaeda and so on,’” he said.“And we’ve already heard reports

of Western intelligence agencies con-tacting the Syrian regime about a sort of joint counter Al-Qaeda strategy in Syria,” Ph illips added.

Assad’s ouster was an unwavering Western demand at the start of the crisis in 2011 but he appears to have strengthened his position following a September deal under which Damas-cus agreed to destroy its chemical arms arsenal.

Assad has said he will likely run for elections scheduled in mid-2014.

On the military level, neither the re-gime – backed by Russia and Iran – nor the opposition, which is armed by Saudi Arabia and Qatar, appear close to victory.

Analyst Daveed Gartenstein-Ross told the US Senate recently the most probable scenario was that the con� ict would last for a decade.

“Given the failures of both diplomacy and war to date, it seems likely that Syr-ia will remain divided between the As-sad-controlled west and a mix of com-peting rebel factions in the east,” said Anthony Cordesman from the Center for Strategic and International Studies.

Adam Baczko, a researcher at the Paris-based Noria think tank, warned of security threats – particularly as the West “had handed over the keys to re-gional actors” – and recalled the huge humanitarian crisis that resulted from the con� ict.

“For the United States, Syria is far away, for us it is at our border,” he said. l

Boy’s death stirs protests in Turkeyn AFP, Istanbul

Protestors clashed with police in Tur-key yesterday as tens of thousands of people took to the streets to mourn a teenage boy who died from injuries su� ered during last year’s anti-govern-ment protests.

Riot police � red tear gas and wa-ter cannon at protestors in the capital Ankara, while in Istabanbul, crowds shouting anti-government slogans lit a huge � re as they made their way to a cemetery for the burial of 15-year-old Berkin Elvan.

Elvan, who died in an Istanbul hospital on Tuesday after 269 days

in a coma, was hit on the head by a tear gas canister while going to buy bread during the demonstra-tions against Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan that gripped Turkey in June.

“Berkin’s murderers are the AKP police,” protesters shouted in Istanbul, referring to Erdogan’s ruling Justice and Development Party (AKP).

“The rage of mothers will su� ocate the killers,” screamed others as they marched through the streets after El-van’s funeral.

His death prompted protests remi-niscent of last year’s unrest, with thou-sands of people clashing with police on

Tuesday in at least 32 cities, including Istanbul and Ankara, where the most violent clashes took place.

The renewed unrest is likely to add to pressure on Erdogan, whose govern-ment has been rocked by an escalating corruption scandal ahead of elections that could decide his fate.

Elvan’s story became a symbol of the heavy-handed police tactics against demonstrators in June, the big-gest of Erdogan’s 11-year-rule.

Erdogan has vowed to step down if the AKP, in power since 2002, loses lo-cal elections on March 30 that are seen as a key test of his popularity after last year’s unrest and the graft probe. l

Libya’s deposed PM � ees countryn Agencies

Former Libyan Prime Minister Ali Zeidan yesterday � ed his country defy-ing a travel ban, hours after parliament removed him from o� ce in a no-con� -dence vote.

Zeidan was in Malta for two hours late on Tuesday on a refuelling stop be-fore going to “another European coun-try,” the island’s Prime Minister Joseph Muscat said, Reuters news agency reported.

Muscat told state-owned television TVM that he spoke brie� y to Zeidan, who was banned from travelling abroad because of his suspected involvement in the embezzlement of public funds.

Libya’s parliament voted Zeidan out of office on Tuesday after rebels humiliated the government by load-ing crude on a tanker that fled from naval forces.

State prosecutor Abdel-Qader Radwan said in Tripoli he had banned Zeidan from travelling abroad be-cause he faced an investigation over the alleged financial irregularities. Zeidan’s whereabouts are unknown. Officials in Tripoli could not confirm his departure, according to the AP news agency. l

Ukraine vows not to � ght Russia in Crimean AFP, Kiev

Ukraine’s acting president told AFP he would not wage war over Crimea as the ex-Soviet state’s premier prepared yesterday to seek US President Barack Obama’s help against Russia’s expan-sionist threat.

The � rst meeting between Obama and Ukrainian Prime Minister Arseniy Yatsenyuk comes with the nation on the EU’s eastern border in danger of breaking apart when the predominant-ly ethnic Russian region holds a Mos-cow-backed referendum Sunday on switching over to Kremlin rule.

Ukraine’s acting President Oleksandr Turchynov said his heavily outnum-bered army would never try to seize back the Black Sea peninsula from Russian troops who made their land grab days after the February 22 ouster in Kiev of pro-Kremlin leader Viktor Yanukovych.

“We cannot launch a military opera-tion in Crimea, as we would expose the eastern border and Ukraine would not be protected,” Turchynov said in an in-terview with AFP.

Turchynov also said Russian Pres-

ident Vladimir Putin had so far resist-ed intense international pressure and refused all contacts with Kiev aimed at resolving the worst breakdown in East-West relations since the Cold War.

“Unfortunately, for now Russia is rejecting a diplomatic solution to the con� ict,” he said. “They are refusing all contact at foreign ministry and top government level.”

Russia’s � rst military involvement in a neighbouring country since its brief 2008 war with Georgia has sparked an explo-sive security crisis and exposed major rifts between Western allies over ways to deal with Putin’s undisguised e� orts to rebuild vestiges of the Soviet state.

Washington has imposed travel bans and asset freezes on Russians held re-sponsible for violating the territorial integrity of the culturally splintered nation of 46 million people.

But the European Union – its � nan-cial and energy sectors much more dependent on Russia than those of the United States – has only threatened tougher measures after taking the lighter step of suspending free travel and broad economic treaty talks. l

Islamist militants ‘killed’ 22 in Syrian villagen Reuters, Beirut

Islamist militants and their local sup-porters have killed at least 22 people in a village in northern Syria near the Turkish border, opposition activists said yesterday.

The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights monitoring group quoted res-idents in Shuyukh, 100 km (65 miles) northeast of Aleppo, as saying that mil-itants from the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL), had killed 12 � ghters from rival rebel groups and at least 10 local tribesmen, including a 16-year-old.

The British-based watchdog, which has a network of sources across Syria and opposes President Bashar al-As-sad, said the men had been executed by gun� re and knives. It said at least nine other villagers were missing and suspected to have been killed.

Media activists circulated online a list of people they said were victims. They named 20 people killed and nine missing, and said four bodies had been thrown into the Euphrates River.

“Residents of Shuyukh betrayed the mujahideen. Then ISIL stormed into the area,” said an opposition activist who runs a Facebook page for the Ja-rablus area, which includes Shuyukh.

He said ISIL, an al Qaeda breakaway group, had participated in the attack, but that local men had led it.

The Facebook page for Jarablus pub-lished a photo of what appeared to be the bodies of � ve men on a dirt path running through a � eld, as bystanders inspected the scene.

ISIL has battled other Islamist rebel groups in the area in the past few weeks. A car bomb it detonated in Jarablus in January killed at least 26 people. l

Protestors hold newspapers bearing a picture of the crying mother of Berkin Elvan on the day of his funeral in Ankara AFP

A Syrian � ag � utters outside a military barrack in the devastated Baba Amr neighbourhood of Homs on May 2, 2012 AFP

There is a rising feeling that it will take years for the crisis to be resolved

What happened to the missing jetliner?n AFP, Bangkok

Five days since it disappeared while en route from Kuala Lumpur to Beijing, there is still no trace of Malaysia Airlines � ight MH370.

Con� icting information, false alarms over debris and confusion over the focus of the search have produced more ques-tions than answers.

Here we take a look at the possible scenarios being weighed up by industry experts as the world waits for clues as to the fate of the Boeing 777:

Explosion on board?The presence on board of two suspect passengers travelling on stolen passports fuelled fears of a terrorist attack. But it was later revealed they were probably just Ira-nian migrants, but CIA Director John Bren-nan said a terror link had not been totally ruled out.

Technical difficulties?The sudden disappearance could also point to a technical problem that could have led to a rapid descent. Reports from the Malaysian authorities that the jet may have made a sharp turn west before it lost contact, possibly pointing to the pilots struggling to rectify a problem, have bol-stered this theory.

“To me that (the veer) suggests there was a stall. That doesn’t mean you lose your engines. It means that you’re los-ing your air � ow over your wings, su� -cient speed to keep the plane  in the air...it would lose altitude really dramatically,”

said former Inspector General of the US Department of Transportation and avia-tion lawyer, Mary Schiavo.

Structural disintegration?The lack of wreckage or black box trans-mission has led to another speculation that the  plane  may have disintegrated mid-air. However, experts say while struc-tural disintegration has been behind some previous aircraft disappearances, new planes use better materials, technology and maintenance schedules.

Hijacking?The absence of debris around the in-tended flight path, the possibility that the flight turned back, and conflicting reports over whether the  plane  was spotted by Malaysian military way off course have added to the speculation of a hijack, which has still not been ruled out by investigators.

Malaysia Airlines says that all its aircraft are equipped with the Aircraft Communi-cations Addressing and Reporting System (ACARS) system – which puts out informa-tion about location and airspeed – but has so far declined to release whatever data it got from � ight MH370.

Pilot suicide?While rare, there have been cases in the past of pilots crashing planes to take their own lives. Some experts opined that a sui-cide bid is possible and if that’s the case, there might not be a lot of debris because the plane would have come down in rela-tively structural integrity. l

9Thursday, March 13, 2014DHAKA TRIBUNE World

Avalanches, heavy snow kill 14 across Kashmirn AP, SRINAGAR

Unusually heavy snowfall has un-leashed avalanches and collapsed homes in the Himalayan region of Kashmir, killing at least 14 people on both sides of the de-facto border be-tween India and Pakistan, o� cials said.

Ten died in the India-held portion of the territory, police said, while Pa-kistan’s military reported another four soldiers dead in an avalanche on that side of the border.

The statement from the Pakistani mili-tary said four soldiers were killed when 26 troops came under a huge � ow of snow late on Tuesday night near the northern district of Astore, about 155 kilometres from Skardu.

The statement added that, despite extreme weather condition, 22 soldiers were “evacuated through heroic ef-forts” by rescuers. The Pakistani mili-tary provided no further details.

On the Indian side, dozens were evacuated from high-risk areas Wednesday, after avalanches killed two Indian army soldiers camped in the Kargil region and another three Nepal-ese laborers working near the heavily militarised Line of Control (LoC).

Another � ve people were killed when dozens of homes crumpled un-der the weight of snow in the south-

ern Kulgam and Shopian areas on the India-held side, police o� cer Imtiyaz Hussain said.

Avalanches are common in the moun-tainous region, especially in spring when the air has more moisture and snow is heavier. But the region has seen an un-usually heavy snowfall for March, with 2 feet falling in the past three days, said Farooq Ahmed Khan of India-held Kash-mir’s Meteorological Department.

The last similar late-season snow-fall was in 2007, when about 2 feet fell during a short time in March. “It’s de� nitely unprecedented to have such heavy snowfall in one single spell for three days,” Khan said.

The snow disrupted power and com-munication lines in India-held Kash-mir, while cutting some areas o� from the rest of India. Authorities issued a “high danger avalanche” warning in many parts of the region, government o� cial Amir Ali said.

Avalanches have caused some of the heaviest tolls for the Indian and Paki-stani armies camped near the de-facto frontier dividing their territories.

In 2012, a massive avalanche on the Pakistani side of the Siachen glacier killed 140 people, including 129 sol-diers. That same year, a wave of snow also buried an Indian army camp and killed 16 soldiers in another place along the Line of Control.

Siachen is located on the northern tip of Kashmir, a Himalayan region which is divided between Pakistan and neighboring India.

In 2010, another 17 Indian soldiers died when a wall of snow slammed into the ar-my’s High Altitude Warfare School. l

16 dead as rival gangs clash in Pakistan’s Karachin AFP, Karachi

Street battles between two rival gangs armed with RPGs and machine guns killed at least 16 people – including four women – in Pakistan’s Karachi yester-day, o� cials said.

The clash, which according to police also injured 39 people, mainly school-children, was the worst outbreak of criminal-related violence to plague the troubled city in recent months.

It “erupted this morning when two gangs exchanged heavy gun� re” in the Lyari neighbourhood, senior police o� -cial Faisal Bashir said, adding that school pupils had been hurt in the cross� re.

“Later they � red RPGs and lobbed hand grenades at each other,” he added, saying the death toll was expected to rise.

Major Sibtain Rizvi, a spokesman for paramilitary troops, added that two gangsters had been killed and one had

been arrested.Dr Seemi Jamali of the Jinnah Post-

graduate Medical Centre, where some of the injured were taken, said three paramilitary rangers and two police were wounded.

Bashir, the police o� cer, said one of the gangs suspected the other of providing a tip to police that led to the killing of a top leader.

According to police the � ring began around 4:00 am (1100 GMT) while ma-jor blasts were heard at noon.

By Wednesday afternoon, some 200 police commandos had arrived on the scene to conduct a search operation af-ter the clash had ended, senior police o� cial Shah Nawaz told AFP.

Local police said Wednesday’s � ght was believed to involve two splinter or-ganisations – the “Uzair Baloch” and “Gha� ar Zikri” gangs – which grew out of the once-dominant Baba Ladla group. l

India vows revenge after deadly Maoist attackn AFP, New Delhi

India’s home minister yesterday vowed to exact revenge for a deadly ambush by Maoist rebels, as undercover agents tried to track down the attackers in their forest hideouts.

“The way our soldiers have lost their lives, we will de� nitely take revenge for this,” Sushilkumar Shinde told re-porters on a visit to the central state of Chhattisgarh, a day after the attack which left 16 dead.

Shinde said members of India’s Na-tional Investigation Agency (NIA) had already taken up positions inside the thick forests where the rebels are be-lieved to have taken refuge.

On Tuesday morning, some 200 rebels in the south of Chhattisgarh ambushed a security patrol which was on a mission to open a road in a heav-ily-forested area, sparking a gun battle that lasted for three hours.

Eleven members of the national paramilitary Central Reserve Police Force (CRPF) were killed, along with four members of the state police force and a civilian.

The attack has heightened fears of unrest in the Maoists’ stronghold in the build-up to the nationwide elections which begin in early April. Chhattis-garh will vote in three phases, on April 10, 17 and 24.

The Maoists, who have been de-scribed by Prime Minister Manmohan Singh as the country’s most serious internal security threat, have been � ghting since 1967 for a communist society by toppling what they call India’s “semi-colonial, semi-feudal” form of rule. l

Malaysia under � re over ‘chaotic’ search for missing jetn AFP, Kuala Lumpur

Malaysia denied yesterday that the hunt for a missing jet was in disarray, after the search veered far from its planned route and China said that con-� icting information about its course was “pretty chaotic.”

Transport Minister Hishammuddin Hussein said Malaysia would “never give up hope” of � nding the plane’s 239 passengers and crew, dismissing alle-gations that e� orts were mired in con-fusion after a series of false alarms, ru-mours and contradictory statements.

“I don’t think so. It’s far from it. It’s only confusion if you want it to be seen as confusion,” he said at a press confer-ence where military and civilian o� -cials faced a grilling from a combative crowd of journalists.

The hunt for Malaysia Airlines � ight 370, involving the navies and air forc-es of multiple nations, had focused on an area o� Vietnam’s South China Sea coast where it last made contact Satur-day on a journey from Kuala Lumpur to Beijing.

But Malaysian authorities said yesterday they were expanding the search to the Andaman Sea north of Indonesia, hundreds of kilometres (miles) away.

“So right now there is a lot of infor-mation, and it’s pretty chaotic, so up to this point we too have had di� cul-ty con� rming whether it is accurate or not,” China’s foreign ministry spokes-man Qin Gang said of accounts of the jet’s course.

Meanwhile, Malaysian air force chief General Rodzali Daud attempted to explain why the search zone had been expanded, telling the press con-ference that military radar detected an unidenti� ed object early Saturday north of the Malacca Strait o� Malay-sia’s west coast.

He said that the reading, taken less than an hour after the plane lost con-tact over the South China Sea, was still being investigated and they were not able to con� rm it was MH370.

The confusion has fuelled perceptions that Malaysian authorities are unable to handle a crisis on this scale, and infuriat-

ed relatives gathered in Beijing and Kuala Lumpur as they endure an unbearable wait for news of their loved ones.

Frustrations boiled over in Malaysia, with the country’s active social media and some press outlets turning from sympathy for the families of relatives to anger over the fruitless search. l

Mamata takes dig at Modin Agencies

Trinamool Congress chief Mamata Ba-nerjee took on Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) prime ministerial candidate Na-rendra Modi yesterday, saying, “Guja-rat’s leader has a communal face.”

The West Bengal chief minister, how-ever, did not name her Gujarat counterpart while going on the o� ensive. She unveiled her party’s national agenda with a rally at Ramlila Maidan in Delhi, but the much-hyped joint show of strength with social activist Anna Hazare did not materialise.

Hazare was not present at the rally. Unfazed, Banerjee said she did not

care who came for the rally and who did not. “Whether somebody supports us or not, we are going to shake up Delhi.”

She added, “We have started from Bengal, but do not forget that Delhi too is my state, so is Punjab, so is Maharash-ta…” She recited lines from Sare Jahan Se Accha (an enduring patriotic poem) to showcase her inclusive credentials. “I don’t want individual power. I want people to be empowered. We won’t al-low the people to be bulldozed.” l

S Korea, Japan hold talks on mending tiesn AFP, Seoul

Top South Korean and Japanese diplo-mats held talks in Seoul yesterday as the United States pushed its two key Asian allies to improve badly strained ties.

The meeting between South Korean Vice Foreign Minister Cho Tae-Yong and his Japanese counterpart Akitaka Saiki came with relations between Seoul and Tokyo at their lowest ebb for years.

At the core of the current stand-o� are emotive, unresolved issues related to Japan’s 1910-45 colonial rule, its wartime use of South Korean women in military brothels and an island territorial dispute.

The situation was exacerbated by Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe’s visit to a controversial war shrine in December that drew strong protests from Seoul and Beijing.

“It is an occasion to test whether South Korea-Japan relations would work out in the future,” Cho told re-

porters before the talks began.South Korean President Park Geun-

Hye has ruled out a summit with Abe until Tokyo demonstrates sincere re-pentance for “past wrongdoings” and recent surveys have shown that the Japanese leader is more unpopular with South Koreans than North Korean supremo Kim Jong-Un.

The rift has been viewed with grow-ing alarm in Washington. South Korea and Japan are the two major US mil-itary allies in Asia and key to the US strategic “pivot” to the region.

Last week, the US assistant secre-tary of state for East Asia Danny Russel urged Seoul and Tokyo to � nd a way past the current diplomatic impasse. “We continue to stress the need for prudence and restraint, for all parties to take steps that will promote healing.”

He held up the model of Japan and the US in overcoming the bitterness of World War II to nurture a close friendship. l

Thousands sue nuclear giants over Fukushima disastern AFP, Tokyo

A class action lawsuit against nuclear suppliers General Electric, Toshiba and Hitachi has ballooned to more than 4,000 claimants who are seeking dam-ages over the Fukushima atomic disas-ter, the lead lawyer said yesterday.

The claimants, hailing from Japan and 32 other countries including the United States, Germany and South Korea, want the US and Japanese nuclear power plant suppliers to pay compensation.

The � ling – which asks for a largely symbolic 100 yen ($1) per claimant – was described as the � rst lawsuit to be brought against nuclear power-plant suppliers over the 2011 accident.

It alleges that the � rms did not make necessary safety updates to the stricken site, which was swamped by an earthquake-sparked tsunami. Em-battled plant operator Tokyo Electric Power is facing massive lawsuits and compensation costs. l

Pakistan clerics declare ban on child marriage ‘un-Islamic’n AFP, Islamabad

Pakistan’s top religious body has de-clared the prohibition of child marriage incompatible with Islam and demand-ed that the government amend its laws, prompting outrage from human rights activists.

The Council of Islamic Ideology, which was formed in 1962 to advise parliament on the compatibility of laws with Sharia, also ruled that a man does not need permission from his wife if he wants to marry another woman.

Tahir Ashra� , a member of the body told AFP yesterday that Pakistan’s Pro-hibition of Child Marriages Act, which stipulates the age of marriage at 16 for women and 18 for men, was not in ac-cordance with Islamic teachings.

“There is no speci� c age limit for marriage in Sharia,” he said.

“Sharia says an individual can mar-ry when he or she reaches puberty and puberty cannot be de� ned by age,” adding: “Family members can mar-ry a child if they think he or she has reached puberty.”

“Islam allows to marry four women so there is no question of asking the consent of � rst wife if a man wants to marry a second time,” he said.

Activists have called on parliament to ignore both recommendations, terming them a violation of women’s fundamental rights.

Zohra Yusuf, chairperson of the inde-pendent Human Rights Commission of Pakistan said the rulings were “against the spirit of the religion.” She questioned why laws against child marriage, which have been in place since the country was created, were being reviewed now. l

WITHOUT DOCTORS

Avalanches have caused some of the heaviest tolls for the Indian and Pakistani armies

Raduan, left, helps her ailing mother Noor Jahan to steady her weak body at their living room in The’ Chaung village in north of Sittwe, Rakhine state, Myanmar. Conditions of living and healthcare in the impoverished village have reportedly detereorated after Doctors Without Borders was expelled from Myanmar over allegations of creating tensions in the violence-scarred region AP

Students lighting candles to pray for the passengers on the missing plane in Zhuji, in China’s Zhejiang province AFP

India or Pakistan?March 7

Sam As much as I enjoy cricket, I don’t think picking sides in a cricket match has much to do in the creation of a saint or sinner. And I am yet to know of a significant religious tradition where any kind of pathological hatred is a criterion for sainthood. Mr Kabir rightly points out the absurdity of equating something rather inconsequential like sports team support with something as sublime as patriotism.

Muntasir N ChowdhuryWould just like to point out, a few members of the crowd did get booed off the gallery when the so-called Bangladeshi souls were showing their support for Pakistan during the Bangladesh-Pakistan game.

RonnieI’m a lifelong sports fanatic and a huge cricket fan (though Test cricket – not ODIs and T20s – remains my mainstay in the sport). I have always liked a lot of individual Pakistani players, their highly attractive attacking � air and outsize talents. I normally support the Pakistan team against everybody (except Bang-ladesh ;-) ). Alas, Pakistani teams are also notorious for their chronic blow-outs in form and results. :-)

There was a time, not too long ago, when our national team was a poor spectacle in internation-al cricket, because they were scarcely competitive at all – losing all the time, and losing badly. And it was obvious how many of our fans, as much out of despair for our lack of success, as admiration for superior sides, simply took to lustily cheering for either India or Pakistan as their adopted proxies for Bangladesh. It’s exceedingly silly, though, to con� ate the support of the average Bangladeshi cricket fan for Indian or Pakistan teams with nec-essarily any sort of political or emotional leanings with those countries, per se.

Divided by borders, united by riversMarch 10

Nabila Binte Zahur Interestingly, you can make out Bangladesh’s north and east borders by the colour of the land. I wonder if there is more deforestation on our side compared to the Indian side that makes this possible.

Zahurul Islam I think it is due to the nature of the terrain! The Meghalya state is the distinctive feature here. You are right ... the northernmost district, Panchagarh, is supposed to have more trees than before because of new tea estates being established with plantations. I am rather taken aback to see vast land covering Bihar and UP not being that green!

Load shedding is still a problemThe claim by the state minister for power and energy, that

the country is no longer experiencing even a single second of load-shedding, is at odds with the di� cult realities that

many Bangladeshis face every day.Reports suggest that a signi� cant number of households and

industries are still experiencing a signi� cant amount of load-shedding, or at least enough to noticeably disrupt both domestic life and business operations. This claim strains credulity, and seems particularly unnecessary given the fact that it has placed a high, and welcome, priority on increasing the country’s generating capacity.

The minister acknowledged that 62% of the people were getting electricity, but added that while electricity supply disruptions may occur for maintenance reasons, the country was free from the sort of power outages that could be classi� ed as “load shedding.”

Such an exaggerated claim on part of the government is damaging to its credibility.

Voters may welcome the government’s promise that, by 2021, the entire country would have access to electricity. However, if claims which seem implausible are made by senior politicians, this decreases the people’s faith in promises made by public o� cials.

We need to acknowledge the reality that load-shedding is indeed still a problem. Denial will not deliver more power.

The government should encourage more transparency so that accurate data on the electricity shortage we face is available to all. Only then can we approach the problem fruitfully and realistically.

Paying for RMG upgrading

Stakeholders have been making concerted e� orts to improve safety standards in the RMG sector. The Accord and Alliance initiatives are a tangible sign of commitment by major brands

to the future of the industry in Bangladesh. It is important for the industry that stakeholders, particularly

the government, BGMEA and BKMEA and international buyers, work in co-operation to keep ensuring progress on improving safety.

Clearly, long-term thinking is needed by all stakeholders to ensure necessary that upgrades are adequately � nanced.

If done correctly, a combination of improved standards, better retro-� tted factories and more modern purpose-built sites will help to raise productivity and ensure long-term competitiveness and sustainability.

This requires a mixture of e� ort and investment by all the stakeholders involved.

For example, the government can help factory owners ensure the speedy development of planned industrial zones. Likewise factory owners can work with stakeholders to improve training programs for workers to increase the quality and volume of outputs.

Even so, with so much of the � nance and dynamism of the industry being dependant on overseas buyers and retailers, it is also incumbent on them to listen to factory owners’ concerns about paying for improvements.

They should use the stakeholder initiatives to agree that improvement plans factor adequate time and su� cient pricing to allow improvements to be implemented.

With concerted e� orts, all stakeholders, most of all the factory workers themselves, will bene� t from long-term investments being made to ensure the improvement and growth of this crucial sector.

Editorial10

www.dhakatribune.com

DHAKA TRIBUNE Thursday, March 13, 2014

LETTER OF THE DAY

CALVIN AND HOBBES

PEANUTS

Letters to the Editor

Joy: World Bank in the way of Bangladesh’s progressMarch 12

Arif Ahmed Don’t forget to show our gratitude to him!

Shaquib Quoreshi Ah! I now see clearly the reason behind our backwardness. :-/

First ever bone marrow transplant carried out in the countryMarch 12

Congrats to the whole medical team who has done this bone marrow transplant! Go ahead Bangladesh!

Saiful Miah

It is important for all stakeholders to ensure necessary upgrades are adequately � nanced

Denial will not deliver more power

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Navy’s drone news is good news!March 10

It was very heartening to note the Chief of Naval Sta� ’s statement: “Import of drone-like devices used to cost the Navy a minimum Tk15m (1.5 crore taka), but now there are locally-made drones, costing Tk100,000!” And, perhaps with a camera installed with the drone, the cost may be between Tk200,000 to Tk300,000! So, instead of one drone, perhaps the Navy can buy more than 10, each with a camera!

However, was it wise for the navy to buy submarines? Our prime aim is self defence, and the submarine is basically an o� ensive underwater vessel used in naval attacks. In our case, what we should do is contin-ue to maintain friendly relations with all nations. For this, the role of the foreign ministry is more important than all our armed forces put together.

Engr SA Mansoor

The Turag dying a slow death!March 10

After all that big talk by Hasina and her govern-ment about love for the nation, there has been no action whatsoever in putting a stop to the dumping of chemical and non-degradable solid waste into the Turag.

Babul Sarwar

Crossword

Sudoku

CROSSWORD YESTERDAY’S SOLUTIONS

ACROSS1 Wander o� (5)4 Eternal city(4)7 Land measure (3)8 Vehicle (3)9 Conjecture (5)12 At hand (4)13 Acknowledged rank (7)15 Insane (3)16 Newt (3)18 Place for pigs (3)19 Edge (3)21 Remembers (7)24 Fruit (4)26 Hackneyed (5)27 Tree (3)28 Adults (3)29 Expensive (4)30 Vital organ (5)

DOWN1 Droops (4)2 Unauthorised school absentee (6)3 Stagger (4)4 S African currency unit (4)5 Metal-bearing rock (3)6 White heron (5)10 Result of addition (3)11 Fixed gaze (5)14 Decree (5)17 Waver (6)18 Not hollow (5)20 Spoil (3)21 Bring up (4)22 Peruvian capital (4)23 Transmitted (4)25 Extinct bird (3)

How to solve Sudoku: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 num-ber repeating.

SUDOKU

n Mamun Rashid

While the entire Bangladesh banking industry is strug-gling with increasing non-performing

loans, burglary, fraud, and a lack of ef-� cient people, many are thinking: How do we ensure the migration of best practices to Bangladesh banking?

When the new private sector com-mercial banks (PCBs) were allowed in the early 80s, most of their CEOs and senior management came from state-owned commercial banks. The trend continued till the mid or late 90s. These people, as usual, were known large private sector clients of those banks and afterwards, the sponsors of the new banks.

They played a major role in ex-panding the country’s trade � nance business. However, their focus was never on business process re-engineer-ing, the establishment of a robust risk management culture, developing a de-livery platform, integrated distribution channel, or even large project � nance.

For obvious reasons, the central bank emerged as the only “change driver” in the Bangladesh banking sector. Reform programs initiated and supported by the development part-ners through the central bank brought in some visible change in the way those banks handled classi� ed loans, charged interest rates to the clients, and maintained coverage against risk assets. However, information technol-ogy, modern management practices, human resource development, and governance did not get much priority in their laundry list.

During the implementation phase of the � nancial sector reform project

(FSRP), a few senior managers in the state owned banks, the central bank, and the � nance ministry got trained in the global banks. When those senior managers later joined the private sector commercial banks, the market could see some changes in the way “risk” is being managed and cross-bor-der trade is carried out. The tail end of the 90s and early 2000s saw a few dynamic young individuals with global outlook mostly from the foreign banks operating in Bangladesh join the pri-vate sector commercial banks.

I would say the pressure for “change” started from there. Their spree for change was kick-started by the few sec-ond-generation foreign-educated en-trepreneurs in their bank boards. This was further supported by the few at the central bank, who came from either the development partners or the foreign bank itself. The “core risk management guideline,” put up with the help of mostly the executives working for the global banks, worked as “equity” in the entire change process.

With the fall of ANZ Grindlays Bank, the closing of American Express Bank, Banque Indosuez, and some other foreign commercial banks, the market saw some good human resources avail-able. The success of the change pro-cess in Eastern Bank (erstwhile BCCI)

brought in a lot of con� dence among the private sector commercial bank directors/sponsors to attract more senior managers from foreign banks to join in decision-making roles in their banks. And this now almost became a “one way tra� c.”

Commercial banks started to gradually embed “change” in their growth strategies. Along with them, mid and junior level o� cials in those local banks also started to put in their e� orts to ensure a better human re-sources policy, centralised processing,

improved service delivery platform, a much improved and well-coordinated risk management process, an alternate product delivery and distribution channel, and more importantly rela-tionship banking.

We have reasons to celebrate the success of the “� rst phase” of change management process in Bangladesh commercial banking. With more customised client solutions building, automated teller machines (ATMS), credit cards, mobile cash (M-cash), large project loans, o� shore banking, cross-border � nancing, spur in retail, and SME banking, Bangladesh’s bank-ing sector is poised to integrate well with the global banking system.

Centralised processing, higher in-vestments in information technology,

service delivery platform and a bigger pool for training and development of the people are commanding the agen-da of the commercial bank’s boards.

CEOs of many of our banks spent considerable years in foreign banks. Many of their deputies also come from foreign banks. All of them may not be “world class,” or may not have clear visibility about the destination, but they know the importance of a peo-ple-centric policy, IT driven solutions, better risk management, and establish-ment of retail banking or transaction banking to diversify risk and introduce e� ciency to the system.

While the Bangladesh banking system is going through a trying time now, many owners and directors of PCBs are thinking about attracting seniors from global banks to join them in the next possible opportunity. They have reconciled within themselves that “change” is going to be the only constant in banking, and we must invite young, energetic, capable peo-ple with home-and-abroad banking experience to run the show.

Though we have yet to see sen-iors from foreign banks driving the “change process” in state-owned banks and bring in visible changes, there and many other developing countries, the scenario may change there too, and soon.

A success transfer is underway, and must continue its journey into excellence. People with global banking experience should be more identi� ed in the development process of Bangla-desh’s banking industry and beyond. Ways could be many, but best answers come only from a few. l

Mamun Rashid is a business professor and � nancial sector entrepreneur.

n Ifti Rashid

When I � rst heard the news on Saturday, I could not be-lieve my ears. It was most

depressing and unsettling to hear Ma-laysian Airlines Flight 370 on the Kuala Lumpur-Beijing has gone “missing.” 

Unfortunately, we live in a time and age when many of us have become somewhat apathetic to media reports on accidents. However, it always hurts most when it is close to home. Both Bangladesh and Malaysia have had strong diplomatic, economic, edu-cational, cultural, and labour ties for decades. On a personal level, Malaysia is my country of birth and makes this news even harder to digest.

Foremost, our heart goes out to the family members of the passengers and crew from Malaysia, China, Australia, New Zealand, United States, Canada, India, Russia, Indonesia, France, Neth-erlands, and Ukraine. Though we are still hoping and praying for a miracle, we can only imagine how traumatic this ordeal must be for the family members. No words can be solace for them. 

Our solidarity is for Malaysia and Malaysians during this di� cult time. We share your pain. We also stand by Malaysia Airlines in this emergency. Let us not forget MAS has so far had one of the most outstanding safety records in the world. I have always felt at home aboard, and this will not change for me.

There have been many rumours circulating online ever since the plane went missing, including the possibility of a terrorist attack. The case of at least two passengers who boarded the plane with stolen passports de� nitely raises suspicion of foul play, it seems too much of a coincidence that both pass-ports were stolen in Thailand. Tickets were apparently booked through Southern China Airlines and pur-chased together. Other speculation is more hopeful, for instance, claims that the cell phone of one of the passengers is still ringing. 

We don’t know the truth, but we can only hope.

As for the o� cial response and emergency mobilisation, one thing that struck me is how Malaysian o� -cials, including Defence and Transport Minister Datuk Seri Hishamuddin Tun

Hussein Onn, have been so candid, forthright, and most importantly sensitive to the family members of those in the missing � ight. It was con-structive that the press conferences did not have the typical ambiance of o� cialdom normally expected, but a high level of sincerity and honesty that is truly impressive. 

By being accessible and communica-tive, Malaysian authorities have dis-pelled rumours, but at the same time addressed public concerns as much as possible. What touched me most was the high level of empathy and engage-ment by not only the minister but every other civil and military o� cial.

This is what we expect from those serving the public with taxpayer mon-ey.  I think there is something here for other countries in the region to learn from Malaysia on handling emergency situations with professionalism and compassion.

In the meantime, our prayers go out for Flight MH 370. Our prayers are

for the passengers, crew, and family members, while we stand by Malaysia, Malaysians, and Malaysia Airlines in this di� cult time for all of you, in fact, for all of us. God bless us, and bring us some good news, please. l

Ifti Rashid is a political and security analyst.

11Op-Ed Thursday, March 13, 2014DHAKA TRIBUNE

n Syeda Samira Sadeque

A recent ad by American Apparel has given rise to much debate and heat. It features a model,

topless, in a pair of jeans, with “Made in Bangladesh,” printed over her bare chest.

According to fashion magazine Elle’s website, “the model’s name is Maks, and she’s a Bangladesh-born merchandiser who’s been with American Apparel since 2010.” The description continues: “She doesn’t feel the need to identify herself as an American or a Bengali and is not content to � t her life into anyone else’s conventional narrative” – a justi� able stance that anyone has – and should have – the freedom to take.

In this age of globalisation, national and cultural identities have become much more � uid in de� nition and have allowed individuals to make choices about such issues. Maks thus has the right and reason to not want to � t into a particular national – or any other – identity.

The website then goes on to quote American Apparel as saying: “Maks was photographed in the High Waist Jean, a garment manufactured by 23 skilled American workers in Down-town Los Angeles, all of whom are paid a fair wage and have access to basic bene� ts such as healthcare.”

Lost in transitionThe controversy, if you ask me, is not in Maks being topless, but in the state-ment on her toplessness that reads “Made in Bangladesh.” This implies, at � rst glance, that being topless is a Bangladeshi norm – which it is not. So the question that arises is: Where and how is Bangladesh relevant to any of this? The only way in which it is re-motely connected to this ad is through Maks’ Bengali origin which she does not want to be attached to. So, doesn’t putting her up as a model with the statement defeat the whole purpose of both the ad and her realisation about her identity?

American Apparel also shared in-formation about how the pair of jeans was made by 23 American workers who are paid a fair wage and have access to certain facilities. If the ad is trying to bring to focus the fact that the manufactures of these jeans have all the bene� ts Bangladeshi workers don’t, that’s a fair point – and in fact, much needed to evoke conscience in our garment industries.

But that has absolutely no relevance to a girl posing top-naked, showing her bare breasts. If the line “Made in Bangladesh” had to go anywhere in the ad at all, it might as well have been on the pair of jeans – as that would draw comparison between the status and condition of Bangladeshi workers

to those in the US. Many could argue that wouldn’t

make sense as the pair of jeans was not made in Bangladesh, but really, which part of the ad conveys a sensible message? Had Maks gone on to model as a Bangladeshi/Bengali, the ad would still have more relevance to the mes-sage it carries; but with the way it has been portrayed, it appears to be a mere collaboration of the three facts which were lost in transition: A topless mod-el, a topless model who does not want to be put within the con� nes of a cul-tural identity, and a pair of jeans made in the US. Three facts that connect at no point except for the page where the ad has been portrayed.

Of freedom and fairnessThe ad is also likely to trigger a dis-cussion on “freedom” – a woman’s freedom to � aunt her body, American Apparel’s freedom to portray their models the way they want to, etc – and these are all very reasonable argu-ments. But why attach a country’s label to it? This is not about being progressive or conservative, feminist or chauvinist, this is a clear violation of a country’s peoples’ sentiments.

A country is not just one person or one girl and their ideologies of free-dom and identity. A country is full of di� erent people, di� erent sentiments, and di� erent ideologies. It would be unfair to attach a whole country’s label to any statement, let alone such a controversial one.

In today’s world, with movements such as FEMEN that stage topless protests to convey their message, it has become very easy to associate feminism to such activities and/or statements.

This, in turn, can potentially imply another association: If you don’t support a woman’s right and freedom to be naked in public, you are not pro-gressive enough – which is dangerous. Being liberal should focus more on one’s stance on a topic than on how they choose to express it.

And most importantly, being liberal should include being liberal enough to respect, if not understand, the op-posing view. I fully support a woman’s right to be naked in public, but it must be looked at in context. This ad is bla-tantly associating a half-naked woman to Bangladesh – a whole country, a whole culture, and that creates a mis-leading and insensitive message.

To sum it up, this ad seems too desperate – blindly desperate – with an aim solely to make a statement and even that statement conveys no message. There is a di� erence between being progressive and being patronising, one that American Apparel clearly fails to see. l

Syeda Samira Sadeque is Sta� Reporter at the Dhaka Tribune.

Blind desperation, desperate blindness

It would be unfair to attach a whole country’s label to any statement, let alone such a controversial one

This ad seems too desperate to make a statement and even that statement conveys no message

We must invite young, energetic, capable people with banking experience to run the show

We can only imagine how traumatic this ordeal must be for the family members. No words can be solace for them

F O O D F O R T H O U G H T

Solidarity for � ight 370

The best practicesT H I R D E Y E

The best banking practices need to come to Bangladesh BIGSTOCK

Progress, or just patronising? WIKIMEDIA

EntertainmentDHAKA TRIBUNE Thursday, March 13, 201412

AR Rahman and Akon in BCB Celebration Concert todayn Limana Solaiman

Music fans all across the country are anticipating great things from the BCB Celebration Concert. For the � rst time, international artistes AR Rahman and Senegalese-American R&B and hip hop icon Akon will perform for the audi-ence of Bangladesh today at the BCB Celebration Concert, scheduled to take place at the Bangabandhu National Sta-dium. All the tickets of the event are sold out and now, fans of the two ar-tistes are buying tickets from the black market at elevated prices.

After reaching Dhaka, Oscar win-ning Indian composer and singer AR Rahman paid a courtesy call on Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina at the Ga-nobhaban on Tuesday evening. Music of the subcontinent was discussed at the meeting and AR Rahman managed to impress the Prime Minister with his achievements and his successful pro-jection of the rich music of the subcon-tinent before the world.

If the two renowned international celebrities are not enough to satisfy the music lovers, celebrated bands of Bangladesh: LRB, Miles, and singer Ar-

nob will also be present at the concert. Another attractive part of the event will be elaborate dance recitals of 90 danc-ers under the choreography of Warda Rihab. The dancers will perform to the tune of the welcome song of the event, Urchhe Shantir Payra, sung by Fuad Al Muktadir and Konal. The 90 dancers will also perform on four more tracks: Shadher Lau by Runa Laila, O Majhi Nao Chhaira De by Sabina Yasmin, Ek-tara Bajaiyo Na by Kumar Bishwajit, and Morar Kokile by Momtaz. It is con-� rmed that the show will be telecasted live on Channel9 from 1:30pm today. l

15 artists present women as larger-than-life at Gallery Cosmos n Shadma Malik

Life, a 15-day group exhibition featuring the lives of women started at Gallery Cosmos in the city on Tues-day. The exhibition tries to portray the life of women in di� erent styles, forms, colours and ideas by a total of 15 artists. The showing will be open till March 25.

The exhibition has been dedicated to three pioneering women in Bangladesh who are Begum Rokeya, Be-gum Su� a Kamal and Jahanara Imam. The talented women artists through their works have tried to acknowledge the courage, dedication and sacri� ces of these three women in their own � elds. The entire exhibition turns out as a message to the viewers to perceive the contribu-tion in building a better and brighter future for all the Bangladeshi women.

An artwork named Glitz by Nazia Andaleeb Preema is on display that immediately provokes the spectator to think twice. About her work, the bold and dynamic artist said: “Women, all over the world are al-ways challenged by the societal norms. She becomes the victim of glamour, glitz and festivals. She always acts in a certain way, regardless of her merit, aspira-tion, belief and talent. Yet, she rises above all and tries to stand tall despite her su� erings. She simply becomes the celebration of a stereotyped myth of womanhood.”

Maksuda Iqbal Nipa loves to play with colour and new techniques of art. She is an artist who would go beyond a theme and subject, and make her own creation outstand-ing. The experimental artist explaining her work titled Beneath the Surface, said: “The colours on my canvas keep on evolving every moment. Working on oil on can-

vas, I tried to create an illusion. The technique is referred as optical il-lusion. It gives a vibrant look at the surface. It is fun to play and perceive when two colours are merged in a new way and creates a whole dif-ferent version.”

Curator, coordinator and participiant of Life Afrozaa Jamil Konka said: “I always want to portray the power that a woman has inside her. To mark the Inter-national Women’s Day, we have brought � fteen artists of wide range in one platform. The art-ists’ endeavour di� ers from one another. We invited veteran artists, along with emerging

ones to showcase di� erent perceptions.” “My series Faded Memories is about Rana Plaza. In

my work, I wanted to portray the process of woman empowerment the obstacles. I have tried to draw those obstructions through the symbol of a crow.”

The inaugural ceremony was accompanied by Heather Cruden, High Commissioner, Canadian High Commission and eminent human rights activist Khu-shi Kabir. l

Tareque Masud Cultural Centre staged a technical show of their � rst production Ashchorjo Sundor Ei Beche Thaka, a play adapted from The Game by Louise Bryant, at the Experimental Theatre Hall of Bangladesh Shilpakala Academy on March 11. The cultural organisation, a tribute to the late � lmmaker Tareque Masud, plans on staging the premiere show on April 4 at the same venue

Marks All-rounder all set to launch n Entertainment Desk

School based talent hunt competition Marks All-rounder 2014 is going to be held once again from March 28, spon-sored by Marks Full Cream Milk Pow-der of the reputed corporate � rm of Bangladesh named Abul Khair Group.

Every child is unique in his or her rights and Marks’ show provides a plat-form for the youngsters to explore their creative and artistic side. The initial se-lection is divided into two groups, prima-ry section will include participants from class one to � ve and the secondary sec-tion will include participants from class six to ten. Participants will be selected from the seven divisions of the country

based on their talent on dancing, singing, acting, drawing, recitation, quiz compe-titions, storytelling ability (primary) and extempore speech (secondary).

The talent hunt will start from March 28 and the 7 divisions of the country are further divided into 25 zones.

Scholarship amounting to Tk10lacs or a car shall be awarded to every “best all-rounder” of the two groups. Each of the four runner ups of the grand � nale will be awarded scholarships of Tk1lacs. Other prizes in di� erent categories include 100 computers to be distributed in schools, 42 gold, silver and bronze medals and numerous other attractive prizes are waiting for the winners of every round, regional and national. l

Ayushmann can sing as well! n Entertainment Desk

Ayushmann Khurrana, who made a fruitful debut with Vicky Donor and is now looking forward to Bewakoo� yaan says he sees no “competitor” in the Hindi � lm industry. He further believes that he has a major plus point because

of the fact that he can act as well as sing.Bollywood currently has a whole lot

of young blood and when asked who he considers as a competitor from among the likes of Ranbir Kapoor and Ranveer Singh, Ayushmann said: “There is no competitor as such. I think my biggest plus point is that I am both an actor and a singer. As far as Ranbir Kapoor is concerned, he is my senior and I like his work,” added the multi-faceted talent, who was earlier a video jockey. l

Glitz by Nazia Andaleeb Preema

Peya in item song n Shadma Malik

The stunning beauty Jannatul Ferdoush Peya is gearing up for her upcoming � ick The Story of Samara, directed by Rikiya Masudo which is expected to release in the middle of this year. About the � lm the glamorous actor said: “In this � lm, I am a researcher in a university. A fantasy horror � lm, The Story of Samara is about � ve friends who have certain birth signs. When the power of � ve comes together, they are transport-ed to a di� erent plane called Samara. We explore a complete di� erent world were humans look

like animals. Suddenly, I am abducted by aliens who erase my memory and control my brain.”

“I am also in an item song. When I am under the control of aliens, I dance to a song titled Ma-tal Hawa and then the story reaches its climax,” added the winner of Miss Bangladesh 2007.

Peya entered the filmdom and debuted as an actor in 2012 through the movie Chorab-ali and achieved best actress award in the critics’ choice category in Meril Prothom Alo Award. The beautiful actor has two films in the pipe line, Gangster Returns and Probashir Bhalobasha. l

Mim’s tele� lm airs on Maasrangan Entertainment Desk

Watch out for sensational star of the media industry, Bidya Sinha Saha Mim in today’s tele� lm Bedonar Shob Kotha Manush Bole Na. Additional members of the cast includes Azad Abul Kalam, Nazmul Kabir and many others. The tele� lm will air on Maasranga at 7:50pm.

Labonno and Ahir meets during a strike and from then on, they forge a re-lationship. They continue to keep in touch with one another over the phone and sometimes meeting in person. After a while, Ahir starts to feel that even though they are in love, Labonno seems to be holding back about being completely honest about her life. Whenever he tries to talk to her about it, Labonno replies “people do not talk about their grief in depth.” Frustrated Ahir gets kidnapped one day by the hooligans of a gangster named Shahin. He is clueless about his abduction until he is questioned in detail about his relationship with Labonno. He is tortured as if he is under police remand. l

Taylor Swift tops money makers list

n Entertainment Desk

Singer songwriter Taylor Swift has been named America’s high-est-earning musician over the last year. She surpassed the likes of Beyoncé, Bon Jovi and even the Rolling Stones to earn nearly $40m from US tour dates, music sales, streaming and publishing royalties, according to Billboard’s annual Money Makers report.

The seven-time Grammy Award-winner tops the overall Bill-board list despite ranking only sixth in digital music sales and eighth in physical album sales. What’s more, over the course of Swift’s 66 sold-out concerts last year, each ticket-buyer appar-ently spent an average of $17 (£10) on the singer’s tour. Swift was previously crowned in the Billboard rich list in 2012. l

13DHAKA TRIBUNEThursday, March 13, 2014

Sport 14 Wenger slams Robben as Arsenal exit

15 Sammy secures WI T20 series against England

0 0 3

Did you know?Chris Gayle (5,813) needs 90 runs to pass Brad Hodge

(5,902) as the lead-ing run-scorer in all

T20 matches

DAYS TO GO

Farhad Reza (C) celebrates taking a wicket with teammates during Bangladesh’s World Twenty20 warm-up game against UAE at Fatullah yesterday MUMIT M

IPL might come to Bangladesh

The second phase of the Indian Premier League season seven is likely to take place in Bangladesh from May 1 to 12 if the Indian government rejects organis-ers’ request to hold matches in speci� c Indian states once polling there ends. A media release from the IPL organisers yesterday informed that India has been forced to move part of its Twenty20 cricket competition to the United Arab Emirates (UAE) and possibly Bangla-desh due to a clash with elections.

The seventh IPL season will begin on April 16 just days after the begin-ning of the country’s general elections. However, the Indian government has informed the IPL organisers that secu-rity forces are needed for the world’s biggest elections, which run until May 12 and cannot be diverted for the crick-et competition.

For that reason, IPL organisers have moved at least the � rst 16 matches to the

UAE from April 16 to 30. The venues are still to be decided according to the tenta-tive schedule while the second phase is likely to be staged in Bangladesh.

 “We have also heard that the BCCI and the IPL organizers plan to hold few games from the upcoming season in Bangladesh. The discussion is tak-ing place with our president Nazmul Hasan. I think we will be informed once it reaches a concrete decision,” said the Bangladesh Cricket Board grounds committee chairman Lokman Hossain Bhuiyan to the Dhaka Tribune yesterday.

 “The BCCI and IPL organiseres have been informed that BCB has no prob-lem in hosting the matches. All of our venues are ready to hold a phase from the tournament which they plan,” Lok-man added.  

 Meanwhile, ICC (International Cricket Council) Chief Executive David Richard-son welcomed the decision of the Board of Control for Cricket in India (BCCI).

  “The BCCI’s decision to stage the � rst part of the IPL 2014 season in the UAE is great news for the people of the UAE and the region. It will complete a remarkable season of cricket in the UAE, which has already seen the suc-cessful staging of the ICC World Twen-ty20 Quali� er 2013 and the ICC U19 Cricket World Cup 2014,” said Richard-son in an ICC media release.

  “This news comes on the back of the on-� eld success of the UAE na-tional team which has quali� ed for both the ICC World Twenty20 2014 in Bangladesh and the ICC Cricket World Cup 2015 in Australia and New Zealand and has the potential to propel cricket’s pro� le to new heights in the country,” the statement mentioned.

The third phase of the tournament after May 12 will be held in India, with the provision that no match be organ-ised on May 16, when vote counting and election results are expected to be announced. l

Tamim hopes for improvement

The four-wicket win against UAE yes-terday hardly explains the uneasiness the Bangladesh side went through dur-ing the course of the warm-up match at Fatullah. Chasing the modest 143 at one point Bangladesh were looking to concede the game to the associate member’s and Tamim Iqbal who re-turned to the side recovering from a neck strain said poor start caused them the discomfort.

“It would have been much better if we had a good start with the ball. And I think we can bowl much better espe-cially in the � rst six overs, but we made a good comeback at the end where at one stage they were looking to score 160-170 but we managed to restrict them to 140 odd runs.

“Same goes to the batting where we tried to be more attacking from the start. We will try to improve these things on our next match. Though T20 looks a fast game but there is still some time to think and I hope we will sit and discuss to improve in the next match,” said Ta-mim at the post match brie� ng session.Bangladesh seemed to be in a relaxed mode yesterday but Tamim informed they are not in a position to take their opponents lightly.

“Look we are not in a position to take any side lightly as we lost seven matches in a row recently and we are taking every match seriously and we are trying to work out on our mistakes and don’t repeat our mistakes and re-

turn to a better position where we ear-lier were,” he said.

The shot selection cost most of the batters and when asked if they were � nding it di� cult to adjust to the for-mat Tami said, “No I think every player knows his duty, maybe we are passing a bad time as a team and you can’t solve everything together and I am sure it will improve as we won the match to-day and gained con� dence for the im-portant match on March 16.

“But we will be looking to attack in the � rst six overs and we have given the license to our top order batsmen

because as you know we don’t have such big hitters like (Keiron) Pollard so the � rst six overs are always important for us,” said Tamim before adding that he is fully � t now and expects to be available for the coming matches.

On the other hand, UAE skipper Khurram Khan, who was also the high-est scorer for his side with 44 runs, was happy with his team’s performance. “I think it’s a wonderful performance to be honest as you know Bangladesh is an experienced side and they are in the in-ternational cricket for long time. Taking them almost to the last over was a huge achievement for us and we have a lot of positives from this game,” he said. l

Women’s face India in third T20 today

Bangladesh national women’s cricket team will take the � eld at the at Cox’s Bazar’s Sheikh Kamal International Cricket Stadium for their third Twen-ty20 of the three-match series against India today. Already losing the series 2-0, the hosts will be eyeing a win to gain the momentum and avoid a three nil sweep. 

The home side came into the series having secured their maiden ODI series victory defeating Pakistan 2-0.

However the momentum shifted once they faced Pakistan for the two-match T20 series. The Bangladeshi women lost the � rst match while the second and last match is scheduled af-ter the India series at the same venue on March 15.

The series’ are mainly the part of build-up for the women’s World T20  where hosts Bangladesh will be making their debut. l

Tigers warm-up with narrow win

Regardless of an ir-responsible batting display and mediocre bowling performance, Bangladesh managed to sneak in a four-wick-et victory over Unit-

ed Arab Emirates (UAE) in their T20 warm-up match at Khan Shaheb Os-man Ali Stadium in Fatullah yesterday.

Though the victory came with seven balls and four wickets to spare the Tigers had to sweat in front of around 2000 home crowd while chasing a modest 143 runs as the batsmen failed to grab the chance of gaining full con� dence ahead of the ICC World Twenty20.

The major concern in the bowling department remained as the bowl-ers looked bite less despite having a weaker opponent. After a gloomy start to this year, yesterday’s match was the perfect platform for the Bangladesh side to stamp their authority before the start of the world event in four days. However, the batting unit also showed signs of careless batting as they lost wickets very cheaply in regular breaks to keep UAE in hunt for an upset.

Anamul Haque once again returned to the dressing room with a � rst over duck which saw the home side get o� to a shaky start and things were getting ugly Shakib al Hasan (nine) followed back. Shakib attempted to � ick Manju-la Guruge but only ended up gifting the left-arm fast bowler his second wicket. Bangladesh were 17/2 when Mush� q and his deputy Tamim Iqbal resqued the side with a 58-run partnership.

However, quick dismissals of the two saw Bangladesh enter that danger territory where they have been in the past few matches. Mush� q tried to lob over mid on but failed as he returned with 27 o� 22 balls while Tamim left in the 11th over after making 43. On his return match Tamim was caught and bowled by Rohan Mostafa after clob-bering six boundaries and one over-boundary in 30 balls.

Bangladesh lost two more wickets - Nasir Hossain and Mominul Haque - before they strolled to victory courtesy of Mahmudullah and Farhad Reza. The duo added 32 runs for the seventh wicket from only 17 balls to land Bangladesh’s win. With � ve boundaries, Mahmudul-lah was unbeaten on 29 o� 18 deliveries.

Earlier, opting to bat � rst UAE were o� to a decent start receiving no threat

from the opponent bowlers until they started to open up with openers Faizan Asif and Ali Amjad, who also impressed in their last match against Hong Kong at Sharjah. Farhad Reza, in his � rst over, conceded two consecutive boundaries before giving his side the breakthrough by dismissing Amjad (19) caught at mid on by skipper Mush� qur Rahim.

Khurram Khan and Faizan (31) kept the Tigers in dissatisfaction for a while before the latter was dismissed by Mahmudullah after hitting the only six of their innings.

Khurram’s dismissal ended UAE’s biggest partnership o� 45 runs with Shaiman, as the associate members could add only 29 runs in the last � ve overs to post 142 for seven. Farhad gave away 25 runs in two overs and picked up two wickets. l

United Arab Emirates inningsAmjad Ali c Mushf b Reza 19Asif c Mominul b Mahmudullah 31Khurram Khan* b Farhad Reza 44SP Patil† b Abdur Razzak 1Anwar c Tamim b Al-Amin 19Amjad Javed b Rubel Hossain 6Rohan Mustafa not out 13V Shetty run out (Mahmudullah) 4Extras (b 1, lb 1, w 3) 5Total (7 wickets; 20 overs) 142

FoW1-32, 2-63, 3-70, 4-115, 5-124, 6-128, 7-142 BowlingAl-Amin 4-0-25-1, Rubel 4-0-17-1, Mahmudullah 2-0-19-1, Farhad 2-0-25-2, Shakib 4-0-28-0, Nasir 1-0-11-0, Razzak 3-0-15-1,

Bangladesh inningsTamim Iqbal c & b Rohan 43Anamul † c Amjad b Guruge 0Shakib c Rohan b Guruge 9Mush� qur* c Silva b Shazad 27Nasir Hossain b Amjad Javed 15Mominul c Shazad b Javed 4Mahmudullah not out 29Farhad Reza not out 14Extras (lb 1, w 2, nb 2) 5Total (6 wickets; 18.5 overs) 146

FoW1-2, 2-17, 3-75, 4-82, 5-10, 6-112 BowlingGuruge 4-0-25-2, Silva 3-0-30-0, Am-jad 4-0-25-2, Kamran 3-1-20-1, Rohan 3.5-0-36-1, Khurram 1-0-9-0Players per side 15 (11 batting, 11 � elding)

Bangladesh won by 4 wickets

SCORECARD

We are taking every match seriously and we are trying to work out on our mistakes

Tamim Iqbal plays a pull shot during Bangladesh’s World Twenty20 warm-up game against UAE at Fatullah yesterday MUMIT M

Hong Kong pull big upsetAfghanistan, Ireland pick easy win

ICC associate mem-ber Hong Kong pulled a huge upset on the opening day of the ICC World Twenty20 warm-up games as they

handed Test playing nation Zimbabwe a four-wicket defeat in Chittagong yes-terday. Meanwhile, Afghanistan and Ireland picked wins in their respective games against Nepal and Netherlands.   

 Zimbabwe v Hong KongRiding on middle-order batsman Mark Chapman’s unbeaten 53 Hong Kong reached their target of 154 in the last ball of the innings. Chapman faced 33 balls and slammed four boundaries and three sixes while he was well supported by Tanwir Afzal (37* o� 21 balls). Ear-lier, Hong Kong justi� ed their decision of � elding � rst by restricting Zimbabwe to 153/7. Late surge from Vusi Sibanda (31) and Chigumbura (45) helped the Zimba-bwean’s reach the modest T20 total. 

Ireland v NepalIreland claimed an easy last over win over Nepal at Fatullah.  Nepal never looked a comfortable batting unit in front of the Irish bowlers as Gyanendra Malla (47) top scored in their 137/7. Later, Ireland chased the target in 19.1 overs with � ve wickets to spare with skipper William Porter� eld leading the side with a 35-ball 38.

Afghanistan v NetherlandsRight-arm pacer Aftab Alam’s four-wicket haul allowed Afghanistan to se-cure a 35-run victory over Netherlands in a curtailed game in Chittagong.

Mohammad Nabi’s 25-ball 40 and 39 apiece from Karim Sadiq and Sha� qullah saw the Afghans register 150/7. Nether-lands’ chase was disrupted by � oodlight issues. The target was curtailed to 122 runs from 15 overs but the Dutchmen were bowled out for 86 in the 13th over. Only four batters reached double � gures with Michael Swart top scoring with 20. Left-arm spinner Hamza Hotak also grabbed three wickets in 2.3 overs. l

Ireland v NepalNepal: 137/7 in 20 overs(Malla 47, Khadka 31, Kevin 2/22)Ireland: 141/5 in 19.1 overs (Porter� eld 38, Wilson 31*, Mukhiya 3/24)

Ireland won by 5 wicketsHong Kong v ZimbabweZimbabwe: 153/7 in 20 overs(Chigumbura 45*, Raza 32, Sibanda 31, Irfan 3/25)Hong Kong: 159/6 in 20 overs(Chapman 53*, Afzal 37*, Utseya 3/19)

Hong Kong won by 4 wicketsNetherlands v AfghanistanAfghanistan: 150/7 in 20 overs(Nabi 40, Sha� qullah 39, Karim 39, Malik 3/28)Netherlands: 86 all-out in 12.3 overs(Swart 20, Aftab 4/25, Hamza 3/16)

Afghanistan won by 35 runs (D/L)

BRIEF SCORES

Thursday, March 13, 2014

Fifa prepares fresh tickets launchFootball’s world governing body FIFA on Tuesday geared up for a fresh launch

of World Cup ticket sales from Wednesday, with 345,000 up for grabs for 60 of the 64 matches. The tickets go on sale in what is the second window of the second sales phase from 1100 GMT although the opening match in Sao Paulo, the � nal in Rio and the semi-� nals in Belo Horizonte and Sao Paulo are already sold out. The sales allocation is on a � rst-come, � rst-served basis, FIFA said on its website, predicting “very high” demand through to the close of sales on April 1. –AFP

'Tiger’s lost his intimidation factor'Outspoken caddy Steve Williams says former employer Tiger Woods has lost

his intimidation factor, as the New Zealander revealed he will quit full-time golf this year. Williams, who was sacked by Woods in 2011 after helping him win all but one of his 14 major titles, added that he had yet to reconcile with the world number one, but hopes to one day. “There’s just personal things and di� erences of opinion about how things went down. He thinks one thing and I think another,” Williams, who now carries the bags of Australian world number two Adam Scott. –AFP

Stoke fail with Walters red card appealStoke City have lost an appeal against the red card shown to forward Jona-

than Walters during Saturday’s 1-1 draw at Norwich City, the Football Association announced on Tuesday. Having just equalised from the penalty spot in the 73rd minute of the Premier League encounter at Carrow Road, Walters was shown a straight red card following a knee-high foul on Norwich mid� elder Alexander Tettey. Stoke tabled an appeal, but an independent disciplinary commission upheld referee Andre Marriner’s decision. –AFP

Bayern Munich's mid� elder Bastian Schweinsteiger (L) scores against FC Arsenal during their Uefa Champions League last 16 second-leg match in Munich, on Tuesday AFP

‘Very happy’ Lippi says no chance of China job

World Cup-winning manager Marcello Lippi has dismissed the possibility of one day coaching China’s national team after signing a new deal with Asian champions Guangzhou Evergrande.

The 65-year-old Italian, who inked a three-year extension at the end of Feb-ruary amid speculation he could take the China job, said: “No, no, no. It’s not possible. There is absolutely no possi-bility of coaching the national team.”

“I have just signed a new contract with Guangzhou and I’m very happy at the club,” the former Juventus manager said.

“I’m comfortable here and we have a great team spirit. So I don’t want peo-ple to think there is any chance of me coaching the Chinese national side go-ing forwards.” l

Ozil out for 'a few weeks': Wenger

Mesut Ozil’s unhappy spell continued on Tuesday when the Arsenal and Ger-many mid� elder su� ered an injury against Bayern Munich that manager Arsene Wenger said is likely to keep him out for several weeks.

Local media reported Ozil had sustained a hamstring injury though Wenger did not con� rm that.

“It looks quite serious,” said Wenger. “I don’t know (how long Ozil will be missing) but for sure he is out (of the Tottenham Hotspur game on Sunday).

“We have to make a scan tomorrow to see how bad it is but he’s out for at least a few weeks. I hope it’s not too bad.”

Ozil’s injury came just as he ap-peared to be turning the corner follow-ing a run of misfortune. l

Spalletti to carry on living in St Petersburg

Italian coach Luciano Spalletti, who was sacked by Zenit St Petersburg last week, said Wednesday he intended to settle permanently in the Russian city.

“I have spent four wonderful years in Saint Petersburg,” Spalletti wrote in his letter to the club posted on Zenit’s o� cial site.

“The love that surrounded me in Saint Petersburg all the time has made me its true resident, its citizen. Pe-tersburg is my home and I will stay on here.”

Last Tuesday Zenit sacked Spalletti. l

Ozil’s vanishing act worry for Arsenal

When Arsenal paid a club record 42 mil-lion pounds ($69.84 million) for Mesut Ozil last August it was with nights like Tuesday in Munich in mind.

Trailing 2-0 from the � rst leg of the Champions League last 16 tie against holders Bayern, it was the perfect stage for Germany playmaker Ozil to deliver a grandstand performance.

What transpired, however, was a brief cameo as Ozil vanished at half-time with a hamstring niggle after be-ing virtually invisible for the opening 45 minutes in the Allianz.

Ozil’s worrying loss of form will be as perplexing for the Frenchman as his likely three-week lay-o� .

He has not scored in the Premier League since before Christmas and, more tellingly, his ability to in� uence games with a range of passing that made him “king of the assists” earlier in the campaign has waned.

His penalty miss against Bayern in the � rst leg at the Emirates appeared to drain his already fragile con� dence and the way he was jeered by Bayern’s fans on Tuesday summed up a horror tie for the former Real Madrid man.

Paying so much money for Ozil was always going to be something of a gamble but when he began the season in scintillating form it looked as though the investment could spur Arsenal to silverware.

However, with injuries taking their

toll and Ozil struggling to maintain his form, Arsenal’s failure to bolster their ranks, particularly in attack, during the January transfer window could ul-timately prove to be their undoing yet again.

The addition of the injured Kim Kallstrom on loan from Russian side Spartak Moscow was hardly a state-ment of intent from the Gunners who at the time were going toe-to-toe with Chelsea and Manchester City.

With a tough-looking run of � xtures to come, they are now behind a free-scoring Liverpool side and defeat in the north London derby at � fth-placed Tottenham Hotspur on Sunday would leave them looking anxiously over their shoulders. l

Simeone open to all Spanish quarter-� nal

Atletico Madrid coach Diego Sime-one welcomed the possibility of meet-ing La Liga rivals Real Madrid or Barcelona in the quarter-� nals

of the Champions League after his side thrashed AC Milan 4-1 in the second leg of their last 16 tie on Wednesday to progress 5-1 on aggregate.

It is the � rst time since Simeone was an Atletico player back in 1997 that Los Rojiblancos have reached the last eight of the Champions League and the Argen-tine insists they must enjoy the experi-ence no matter who they are paired with.

“We will wait until the opponent comes out of the hat. It doesn’t bother me at all if it is a Spanish team.

“We will continue with humility as we always do and you can’t choose who you play. All we can do is relax and recuperate.”

“We started better and it seemed like the tie was well on track, but then they grew into the game. We weren’t getting to them on the wings and it complicated things for us.

“It was not so much the second goal,

but the third goal that allowed us to re-lax because it was then very di� cult to come back in the tie.”

Milan boss Clarence Seedorf con-gratulated Atletico on a deserved win over the two legs, but lamented his side’s luck as Arda’s de� ected goal came when they were having a good spell.

“Congratulations to Atletico, they deserved this victory, especially in the second-half.

“We lost control of the game. Their second goal arrived when we were hav-ing our best spell in the game, but that is football.”

Seedorf has only been in charge of the seven-time European champions since January as he replaced the sacked Massimiliano Allegri.

The Rossoneri’s season is now ef-fectively over as they lie 11th in Serie A, nine points o� the European places.

And the former Dutch international admitted he now has to build the side with an eye to returning Milan to their former glory next season.

“I arrived to help and improve the situation. Next season we will build something new and better. This year everything started badly and now we are trying to � ll the holes. l

Spurs under pressure ahead of Ben� ca clash

The pressure is on Totten-ham Hotspur to perform in the � rst leg of their Europa League last-16 tie against Ben� ca on Thursday, while there are two enticing der-

bies on the cards elsewhere.This is a big week for Tim Sher-

wood’s Tottenham side as they look to bounce back from a thumping 4-0 defeat at Chelsea, the meeting with the Portuguese league leaders at White Hart Lane coming ahead of Sunday’s north London derby against Arsenal in the Premier League.

Spurs capitulated in the second half at Stamford Bridge and the defeat dam-aged their prospects of qualifying for next season’s Champions League while also turning up the pressure on their rookie manager.

It has been suggested that Totten-ham will look to replace Sherwood with experienced Dutchman Louis van Gaal in the summer, but a good result against an in-form Ben� ca would help the current incumbent’s cause.

Ben� ca travel to England on a run of 23 matches undefeated in all com-petitions. Last season’s Europa League � nalists have won eight consecutive games, all without conceding a goal, and are currently seven points clear at the top of their domestic Super League.

The tie evokes memories of the clubs’ meeting in the semi-� nals of the European Cup in 1962, when the late Eusebio’s Ben� ca prevailed en route to lifting the trophy.

Meanwhile, one of the great rivalries in the Italian game will be translated to the European stage as Juventus take on Fiorentina in Turin.

The form guide suggests Antonio Conte’s Juve are the clear favourites - they beat La Viola 1-0 in Serie A at the weekend to go 14 points clear at the top of the table and leave Fiorentina with just one win in six games.

There is also a derby in store in Spain, with bitter city rivals Sevilla and Betis meeting at the Sanchez Pizjuan.

Unai Emery’s team are seventh in La Liga and won their last two home games against Betis by four-goal margins, while Betis lie bottom of their domestic league.

Elsewhere, the 2011 Europa League winners Porto, who recently sacked coach Paulo Fonseca in response to their unsatisfactory form in the Por-tuguese Super League, could � nd life tough against Napoli.

Benitez also won the UEFA Cup in 2004 with Valencia, the Spanish club who go to Bulgaria this week to face surprise package Ludogorets Razgrad, who have already beaten PSV Eind-hoven and Lazio this season.

Lyon host Czech champions Vik-toria Pilsen, AZ Alkmaar face Anzhi Makhachkala, and Swiss champions Basel, semi-� nalists last season, take on Salzburg, who have won 14 con-secutive games, including beating Ajax over two legs in the last round. l

Wenger slams Robben as Arsenal exit

Arsenal manager Ar-sene Wenger blamed Wojciech Szczesny’s � rst-leg red card for the Gunners’ Champi-ons League last 16 exit and slammed Arjen

Robben for provoking the red card as the Gunners bowed out at Bayern Munich.

Holders Bayern Munich booked their place in the Champions League’s quarter-� nals, despite Arsenal earning a 1-1 draw in Bavaria in Tuesday’s last 16, second-leg clash.

A second-half Bastian Schweinstei-ger goal gave Bayern a brief lead before Arsenal’s Lukas Podolski equalised with a thunderbolt of a shot as the tie � n-

ished 3-1 on aggregate.Arsenal failed to overturn their 2-0

de� cit from the � rst leg three weeks ago, which still riles Wenger.

The Gunners � nished with ten men in London after Italian referee Nicola Rizzoli sent o� Gunners goalkeeper Szc-zesny for conceding a spot-kick with a foul on Robben.

“Overall in the two games what made the di� erence was the decision to send our goalkeeper o� ,” said Wenger.

“I felt it was not a red card as simple as that. Robben is very good at getting something out of nothing, he’s a good diver, but that’s part of his game.

“I have to congratulate the (Arsenal) players for their heart and e� ort.

“We wanted to come out of that tie quali� ed, but we came up short.

“Good luck to Bayern, but I think they are a bit more vulnerable than last season.”

Robben angrily rebuked Wenger’s diving claims.

“I expect more of great managers, they don’t need to resort to claims like that,” said the Dutch winger.

“I don’t want to have to defend my-self against remarks like that.”

Bayern boss Pep Guardiola was pleased that his side restricted Arsenal’s

scoring chances – only a Olivier Giroud header and Podolski’s thunderbolt truly troubled the hosts defence.

But Bayern’s honorary president Franz Beckenbauer criticised the hold-ers for a lack of creativity.

“In the end, it’ll be like Barca: un-watchable. They will pass the ball back even on the goal-line,” moaned the for-mer West Germany World Cup winning captain and coach.

But Guardiola, whose side are look-ing to go 50 Bundesliga games unbeaten against Bayer Leverkusen on Saturday, had a di� erent take.

“We were able to minimise our er-rors, we played intelligently and at a very high level, I am very satis� ed,” said the Spaniard.

“Arsenal had a chance in the � rst half,

but we wanted to control the game and we succeeded.

“Apart from the goal, which might have been whistled as a foul, but noth-ing happened.”

Podolski shoved Bayern captain Philipp Lahm o� the ball before his sec-ond-half equaliser, but the Germany star said his challenge was legitimate.

“The ref didn’t blow his whistle, so the matter is closed,” said Podolski.

“We can discuss these little aspects over and over again, but at the end of the day, we are out. It’s always di� cult coming back from 2-0 down against one of the best teams in the world.

“Their second goal in the � rst-leg killed us a bit.

“We’re out and now we need to focus on the Premier League and Cup.” l

RESULTSBayern Munich 1 1 ArsenalSchweinsteiger 54 Podolski 57

Atletico Madrid 4 1 AC MilanDiego Costa 3, 85, Kaka 27Turan 40, Raul Garcia 70

FIXTURES Porto (POR) v Napoli (ITA) Basel (SUI) v Salzburg (AUT)Razgrad (BUL) v Valencia (ESP) Tottenham (ENG) v Ben� ca (POR) Alkmaar (NED) v Anzhi (RUS) Lyon (FRA) v Pilsen (CZE) Sevilla (ESP) v Betis (ESP) Juventus (ITA) v Fiorentina (ITA)

Atletico Madrid's Brazilian-born forward Diego da Silva Costa celebrates after scoring against AC Milan during their Uefa Champions League quarter-� nal second leg match at the Vicente Calderon stadium in Madrid on Tuesday AFP

SportDHAKA TRIBUNE14

SportDHAKA TRIBUNE Thursday, March 13, 2014 15

Sony SixNBA 2013-145:30AMBoston v New York8:30AM LA Clippers v Golden StateTen Cricket12:15PMWest Indies v England 3rd T20Ten SportsUefa Europa League, R-1612:00A M Ludogorets v Valencia 2:00AM Juventus v Fiorentina 4:00AMIndian Wells 2014Quarter FinalsTen ActionUEFA Europa League, R-1612:00AM Porto v Napoli 2:00AM Tottenham v Ben� ca Ten HDUEFA Europa League, R-1612:00AMBasel v Salzburg 2:00AM Sevilla v Real Betis

DAY’S WATCH

Roman Sana � nishes 7th in Asian Archery Grand PrixRoman Sana of Bangladesh � nished 7th scoring 650 out of720 among the 56 archers in the quali� cation round of the 1st Asian Archery Grand Prix in Bangkok yesterday. However, Emdadul Haque Milon, the top ranked archer of the country � nished 8th scoring 648, Sheikh Sajib was positioned 29th scoring 626 and Prennoy Murong scored 572 to � nish 51st. Sana, Sajib and Milon’s score of 1924 saw Bangladesh � nish � fth among the 13 countries at the team event. Women archers Mathui Pru Marma totaled 622 of 720 to � nish 15th among 43 archers while Beauty Roy was 26th scoring 588, Shyamoli Roy grossed 569 to � nish 31st. Bangla-desh women’s � nished 7th amongst the 11 teams totaling 1272. In the mixed doubles, Roman Sana and Mathui Pru Marma scored 1272 to � nish 8th.

–Tribune Desk

Top seed Amol upset by Dipu LalDipu Lal of Nordic Club upset top seed Amol Roy Of Engineers Club in Run-ner Group Independence Day Open Tennis at the National Tennis Complex yesterday. In the pre-quarter� nal, Dipu Lal showed superb form to oust Amol Roy 6-3, 7-5 and cruise through to the quarter-� nals. Anwar Hossain of British High Commission overpowered Zami of Mymensingh 7-5, 6-2 and Akhtar Hossain of BKSP outplayed Chanu Lal of Navy Club 6-2, 6-2 to move into the quarter-� nals. In the men’s doubles, Delwar Hossain and Mamun Bepari defeated Laxman Lal and Biplob Ram 6-3, 6-1, Anwar Hossain and Rustom Ali prevailed over Zami and Badal 6-0, 6-0, and Asmtaullah and Munir Hossain overpowered Niranjan Ram and Arif Hossain 6-4, 6-0 to move into the quarter-� nals.

–Tribune Desk

Navy, PDB reach semis Bangladesh Navy and Power De-velopment Board secured last four places in the Minister Independence Day Volleyball, winning their respective quarter� nals at the volleyball stadium yesterday. The spikers of the Navy team beat Border Guards Bangladesh 25-19, 25-23, 23-25, 25-13 while PDB had to � ght hard to oust Bangladesh Air Force 25-17, 19-25, 25-18, 21-25 and 15-06. Bangladesh Army and Titas Gas secured the other two semi� nal slots on Tuesday. The semis will be played today while the � nal is billed to take place on Friday.

–Tribune Desk

‘Small’ signs of hope for Schumi: familyMichael Schumacher is showing “small, encouraging signs” of recovery from injuries sustained in a ski accident, his family said Wednesday, while acknowl-edging the Formula One legend faced a long battle ahead. The family voiced con� dence the 45-year-old would pull through after 11 weeks in a medically induced coma but declined to give further details of his condition. “We are and remain con� dent that Michael will pull through and will wake up,” said the statement. “There sometimes are small, encouraging signs, but we also know that this is the time to be very patient.”

–AFP

QUICK BYTESEnglandM. Lumb lbw b Santokie 4A. Hales c Simmons b D.J. Bravo 40M. Ali lbw b Santokie 5E. Morgan c Simmons b Badree 3J. Buttler c Sammy b Santokie 67R. Bopara c D.J. Bravo b Santokie 14L. Wright not out 7T. Bresnan c Ramdin b D.J. Bravo 7Extras (b-1,lb-3, w-1) 5Total (7 wickets, 20 overs) 152

Fall of wickets1-13 (Lumb), 2-21 (Ali), 3-26 (Morgan), 4-102 (Hales), 5-137 (Buttler), 6-143 (Bopara), 7-152 (Bresnan).BowlingBadree 4-0-16-1, Santokie 4-0-21-4, Samuels 2-0-17-0, Rampaul 3-0-30-0 (1w), Sammy 1-0-17-0, D.J. Bravo 4-0-34-2, Russell 2-0-13-0.West IndiesD. Smith c Bresnan b Dernbach 30C. Gayle b Bopara 36M. Samuels c Hales b Bresnan 28L. Simmons c wkpr Buttler b Wright 19A. Russell c Hales b Bresnan 2D. Sammy not out 30D.J. Bravo not out 8Extras (w-2) 2Total (5 wickets, 18.5 overs) 155

Fall of wickets1-48 (Smith), 2-75 (Gayle), 3-111 (Sim-mons), 4-116 (Samuels), 5-116 (Russell).BowlingBresnan 3.5-0-51-2, (1w), Dernbach 3-0-30-1 (1w), Tredwell 4-0-27-0, Bopara 4-0-10-1, Parry 2-0-17-0, Wright 2-0-20-1.

West Indies won by 5 wicketsWest Indies lead 3-match series 2-0

SCORECARD

Clemon Naryanganj Academy153/6 in 20 overs (Rony 85 (63, 6X5, 4X4), Emon 0, Sumit 5,Masum 2, Su-mon 9, Sarif 12, Rajon 13, Shahjahan 6*, Azim 1/29, Tarek 1/23, Khairul 1/16, Milon 1/27, Rasel 2/23. Body Line Academy 113/10 in 18.3 overs (Rana 8, Pappu 3, Tomal 0, Antu 1, Ali 21, Milon 8, Tarek 1, Rasel 54, Nazrul 0, Khairul 4, Azim 11. Masum 2/6, Rony 4/19, Ashraful 3/16) ResultClemon NCA won by 40 runs

SCORECARD

Ispahani Corporate Badminton starts today

The 2nd Ispahani Corporate Badminton Grand Slam with the participation of 19 renowned corporate houses of the coun-

try starts at the O� cer’s Club today.The participating teams are Ispahani

group, Securex, Banglalink, bkash, Hol-cim, City Schools Limited, Kazi Farms Limited, Pioneer Insurance, Qubee

(two teams), Bando Design, Eastern Bank, GPIT, Brac Bank Limited, ULAB, Intersto� and O� cers Club Limited.

It’s the second consecutive year Ispahani Group has stepped up to spon-sor the tournament. Dhaka Tribune is the newspaper partner, SATV is the TV partner, Colors FM is the radio partner while Design Matra will be working as the PR partner. O� cers Club are the venue partners in the tournament or-ganised by Excalibur Entertainment.

The total of 100 shuttlers will be tak-ing part across the four events - men’s and women’s singles, men’s doubles and mixed doubles.

Head of marketing of Ispahani Group Ismail Hossain said pepped up by the response of the last year’s edition his company decided to continue the sponsorship. Excalibur Entertainment chief executive o� cer Farhan Quddus was also present on the occasion. l

Ismail Hossain, the head of marketing of Ispahani Group speaks at the press conference of Corporate Badminton yesterday COURTESY

Dell, the champions of the Smart Cricket League celebrate their triumph with the chief guest state minister for telecommunications Junaed Ahmed Palak at the Kalabagan Club ground recently COURTESY

Clemon Naryanganj Cricket Academy captain Sharif receives the 4H Group Cricket trophy from the chairman of the 4H Group Mamunur Rashid Chowdhury at the City Club Ground yesterday COURTESY

Clemon Naryanganj win 4H Group cricket

Clemon Naryanganj Cricket Academy clinched the title of the 4H Group Cricket Tournament organised by Mountain Sports by beating Body Line Cricket Academy by 40 runs at the Mir-pur City Club Ground yesterday.

Batting � rst, Clemon Naryanganj Cricket Academy posted a total of 153/6 with Rony, the eventual man of the match blasting 85 o� 63 balls. Later the Naryanganj based academy bowled their opponents out for 113 with Rony claiming 4/19 and Ashraful 3/16. Rasel’s 54 gave some decency to the Body Line’s total.

The tournament was the brain child of former national cricketers Habibul Bashar, Sanwar Hossain, Javed Omar

and Hasanuzzman Jhoru. Eight acad-emies participated in the meet. l

Djokovic and Li advance at Indian Wells

Normal service resumed at the BNP Pa-ribas Open in Indian Wells on Tuesday when Novak Djokovic safely booked his place in the fourth round of the men’s draw and Li Na moved into the women’s quarter-� nals.

Djokovic had a little hiccup when he dropped the second set of his match with Colombia’s Alejandro Gonzalez but was otherwise untroubled in win-ning 6-1 3-6 6-1.

“I thought I played really well from the start,” said Djokovic, a two-time champion at Indian Wells.

“Then suddenly I just had a big loss of concentration and allowed him to win the second set for no reason. I bounced back better in the third.”

While the Serbian was not at his best, Djokovic did at least survive to � ght another day in the Californian desert after the shock losses of world number one Rafa Nadal and Maria Sharapova on Monday.

Djokovic’s next opponent is the big-serving Croatian Marin Cilic, who recorded his 20th win this season with a 6-4 6-3 over Spain’s Tommy Robredo.

“I obviously cannot allow myself to have these particular concentration lapses in the match at this level espe-cially in the next match when I’m play-ing Cilic, a guy who is in really good form and I think has gotten better in last couple of months working with (Goran) Ivanisevic.”

Li, promoted to the women’s top seed after winning the Australian Open and in the absence of Serena Williams, beat Canada’s Aleksandra Wozniak 6-1 6-4 but only after a extraordinary � nal game where she struggled to close out the match.

Li raced through the opening set in just over half an hour then recovered from 3-0 down to serve for the match at 5-4 when she suddenly got the wobbles.

The � nal game lasted 20 minutes as Li squandered 10 match points and

took her tally of double-faults for the match to nine before she � nally sealed the win.

“I only can say: Welcome to the cra-zy women’s tennis tour,” she told the crowd in a courtside interview.

“I think all the match I was feeling pretty good, except the last game,” Li was quoted as saying on the WTA web-site (www.wtatennis.com).

“The funny thing was that in the beginning of the game I was feeling tight, nervous, and then I was like, “What’s going on? Why can’t I � nish the match?” and she wasn’t giving up, and was defending so well. It was really tough.

“All I can say is wow, she saved a lot of match points. She’s pretty good.”

While Robredo lost to the tower-ing Cilic, three of his compatriots all advanced with Fernando Verdasco upsetting world number nine Richard Gasquet of France 7-6 (7-5) 6-1 to leave Djokovic as the only top-10 player left in the bottom half of the men’s draw. l

Pistorius court shown damaged bat, door from death scene

A forensics expert on Wednesday staged a dramatic re-enactment of how Paralympian Oscar Pistorius broke down the door of the toilet where he shot dead his girlfriend.

Police Colonel Gerhard Vermeulen brought before the South African court both the door and the cricket bat -- two pieces of physical evidence which could hold the key to the case.

In opening testimony Vermeulen demonstrated how the door was struck with the bat, which was in turn used to wedge open a gap between a panel and the inner frame.

“The bat went through the door and there’s actually marks on the tip of the bat which correspond with what hap-pened,” said Vermuelen, a forensics ex-pert with three decades of experience. l

West Indies rallied from a middle-order wobble to romp to a series-clinching � ve-wicket victory over England in the second Twenty20 International of the three-match series at Kensington Oval in Barbados on Tuesday.

Jos Buttler’s career-best 67 saw the tourists’ to a total of 152 for seven bat-ting � rst with left-arm seamer Krish-mar Santokie justifying his inclusion in place of injured spinner Sunil Narine by claiming four for 21 to earn the “Man of the Match” award.

Cruising at 111 for two in the 15th over, the hosts lost three wickets for � ve runs before captain Darren Sammy belted an unbeaten 30 o� just nine de-liveries to take his team to 155 for � ve with seven balls to spare.

With an unbeatable 2-0 lead going into the � nal match on Thursday at the same venue, the World T20 title-hold-ers are looking for a strong � nish in the Caribbean before heading o� to Ban-gladesh for the defence of their crown.

“This is all about building towards the T20 World Cup,” said a de-lighted Sammy.

“It’s good that all the guys are � ring and when you sit down and plan, then execute on the � eld, it feels good.”

Handicapped by the absence of regular captain and key bowler Stuart Broad because of injury, England nev-

ertheless proved far more competitive than in the � rst match on Sunday, al-though their poor start with the bat and inability to sustain the e� ort in the � eld eventually cost them dearly.

“I though we were about 15-20 runs short at the end,” stand-in England skipper Eoin Morgan conceded. We showed a lot of � ght though, which is good heading into the World Cup.”

They were labouring at 26 for three in the � fth over after Morgan chose to bat � rst before Buttler joined opening batsman Alex Hales in putting on 76 for the fourth wicket.

The wicketkeeper-batsman needed more than a bit of luck but was particu-larly impressive, hammering � ve fours and three sixes o� 43 balls to put his team in position to post a competitive total.

However Hales’ dismissal for 40 just before a rain interruption proved critical in limiting England’s progress on the resumption as Santokie’s clev-er variations over his � nal two overs proved extremely e� ective.

“I just try to vary the pace, and it worked on this occasion,” said Santo-kie. I just stick to the basics and just seek to improve every time I get the opportunity to play.”

In contrast to their opponents, Dwayne Smith (30) and Chris Gayle (36) gave the West Indies a � ying start,

and although both failed to carry on to the end, their rate of scoring eased the burden on the batsmen who fol-lowed.

Ravi Bopara’s medi-um-pace - he conceded just ten runs from four overs for Gayle’s wicket - and James Tredwell’s left-arm spin gave Eng-land hope of a � ght-

back while Tim

Bresnan’s double-strike in removing Mar- l o n Samuels and Andre Russell o� successive balls in the 17th over lifted the prospect of a tight � nish.

However Sammy, in partner-ship with Dwayne Bravo, killed o� England’s chances and al-lowed the home fans in another full-house at Kensington to savour the rarity in recent times of a West Indies series victory. l

Li Na of China celebrates her victory at Indian Wells Tennis Garden on Tuesday AFP

Sammy secures WI T20 series against England

West Indies' Darren Sammy leaps to celebrate after the West Indies won their second T20I against England at Kensington Oval in Bridgetown on Tuesday REUTERS

Fake cancer hospital busted in capital, two jailed n Kailash Sarkar

A mobile court yesterday busted and sealed o� a fake cancer hospital run by a number of doctors, o� cials and employees of the National Institute of Cancer Research and Hospital (NICRH) and Directorate General of Health Ser-vices (DGHS) in Mohakhali of the cap-ital.

The court also sentenced two em-ployees of the hospital named ‘Doc-tors’ Chamber’ to two years in prison and � ned them Tk2 lakh each. In de-fault, they would have to su� er anoth-er three months in jail.

Convicts Beauty Begum, 38, and Shahadat Hossain, 24, were sent to jail while a total of 12 patients, who had been undergoing treatment at the hos-pital, were admitted to the NICRH for proper treatment.

The convicts said a person named Tayabur Rahman, along with Mahbub-ul-Alam and Nayan Hasan, had been running the hospital with the assistance of two NICRH doctors Golam Mostofa and ARM Ra� qul Islam. The mobile court found prescriptions and other documents that showed involvement of the two with the hospital.

The convicts also disclosed that Mahbub Alam, a leader of the ward boys at the NICRH and Abul Hasan, a stenographer at the DGHS, were the key people of the fake institution. They said they would entice NICRH patients

into getting admitted at the hospital, saying the service o� ered would cure their cancer rapidly.

Executive magistrate AHM Anwar Pasha who led the mobile court told the Dhaka Tribune: “During primary interrogation, convicts Shahadat and Beauty admitted that some unscrupu-lous NICRH and DGHS sta� teamed up to run the hospital.”

The magistrate said during the drive, they had found Beauty, having no expertise or training, applying che-motherapy to patients.

“The hospital neither had any reg-istration nor any doctor”, said Pasha, adding: “At least three doctors, six nurses and three cleaners are manda-

tory to operate a 20-bed hospital, but the hospital, with only four cabins and 18 beds, had no doctor, technician or nurse.”

He said after the hospital was sealed off, all 12 patients were shifted to the NICRH. They were identified as Lalu Miah, Abul Hashem, Kabir Hossain, Maleka Begum, Abdul

Karim, Nur Begum, Md Golam Mostofa, Parul Akhter, Jahanara Begum, Bul Hossain, Altaf Hossain and Kashem Miah.

Speaking about the fake hospital, patient Kabir Hossain of Jhalakathi said: “I visited Dr ARM Ra� qul Islam over a month ago but he suggested

me to get admitted to ‘Doctor’s Cham-ber’, saying there was no vacant seat at NICRH at the time.”

“I’ve been taking treatment here for the last one month. The doctors would visit me twice a day in exchange for Tk 2000 a day while I was charged Tk 300 for seat rent per day. Besides, we were

asked to purchase medicines from ‘Mayer Doa’ medicine shop located on the ground � oor of the building”, said Kabir. “In the last 30 days, my expense stood at Tk 30,000.”

Major Md Asif Kuddus, a deputy di-rector of RAB-1, and Dr Yogesh Chandra Roy accompanied the mobile court. l

16 Back PageDHAKA TRIBUNE Thursday, March 13, 2014

Block 7 deal with Santos-Kris signedn Aminur Rahman Rasel

Bangladesh yesterday signed a deal with a joint venture of Australia-based San-tos and Singapore-based Kris Energy to start oil and gas exploration in o� shore shallow block 11 in the Bay of Bengal.

The government and Petrobangla together signed the production-shar-ing contract (PSC).

The contract period for the block is eight year, with the � rst � ve years for initial exploration and the rest for sub-sequent exploration.

Santos and Kris Energy o� ered to invest $32m to conduct 2D seismic sur-vey of 887 line-km, 3D seismic survey of 300sq-km and drill a well. The pro� t share ratio of the government would be 55%-80% for both gas and oil.

If the company goes into commer-cial operation, then Bapex will bear 10% of the total investment cost.

“We will also sign a PSC for a shallow block with the US-based ConocoPhil-lips next month,” Petrobangla Chair-man Hossain Monsur told the Dhaka tribune yesterday.

ConocoPhillips has o� ered to invest $23.5m to conduct 2D seismic survey of 2,347 line-km, 3D-seismic survey of a 500sq-km area and drill one explo-ration well in block 7. The pro� t-shar-ing ratio for the government would be 55%-80% for both gas and oil.

After participating in an internation-al tender, Santos and Kris Energy ob-tained the exploration rights to block 11 and ConocoPhillips got block 7.

On February 17, Bangladesh signed two deals with India’s state-owned ONGC Videsh Limited and Oil India Limited to start oil and gas exploration in o� shore shallow blocks 4 and 9.

Yesterday during the signing with Santos and Kris, Finance Minister AMA Muhith, Prime Minister’s Advis-er Taw� q-e-Elahi Chowdhury, State Minister for Power, Energy and Mineral Resources Nasrul Hamid, and Energy and Mineral Resources Division Secre-tary Md Mozammel Haque Khan were present.

Senior Assistant Secretary for En-ergy and Mineral Resources Division Khadiza Naznin, Petrobangla Secretary Imam Hossain, Secretary of Bangladesh Petroleum Exploration and Production Company Limited (Bapex) Sawkat Os-man, President of Santos Sangu Field Limited Andrew De Garis, and General Manager (Bangladesh) of Kris Energy (Asia) Limited Edwin G Bowles signed the deals on behalf of their sides.

Muhith said: “We are giving importance to exploration for the energy sector as it has been the key to any development of the civilization. We will continue e� orts to achieve energy security.” l

70,000 workers become illegal in Omann Rabiul Islam

At least 70,000 Bangladeshi migrant workers have become illegal in Oman as they have � ed from their workplaces without the permission of their spon-sors.

A four-member delegation led by Saleh Aayel Al Amri, adviser to the Omani manpower ministry, disclosed it at a joint committee meeting held at the expatriates’ welfare and overseas employment ministry in the city on Tuesday.

Expatriates’ welfare secretary Khon-daker Showkat Hossain led the Bangla-desh side at the third joint committee meeting.

A senior o� cial of the ministry told the Dhaka Tribune that the delegation at the meeting expressed concern as the rate of runaway workers was very high.

Bureau of Manpower, Employment and Training (BMET) Director General Begum Shamsun Nahar told the Dha-ka Tribune that the migrant workers left their workplaces in search of better jobs that would pay more wages. Some-times they failed to recover migration cost and left their original sponsors to work elsewhere to earn more, she add-ed.

The DG said Oman would not send back these Bangladeshi workers. l

Operation of 6 fertiliser factories put on hold to save power for T20 WCn Aminur Rahman Rasel

The Petrobangla has decided to halt operation in six fertiliser factories out of seven except for Jamuna Fertilizer Company Limited from tomorrow until further notice.

The decision was taken to increase gas supply to power plants to ensure uninterrupted electricity supply for the upcoming T-20 Cricket World Cup and ongoing Boro-irrigation.

Petrobangla will suspend gas sup-ply to Karnaphuli Fertiliser Company Limited (KAFCO), Asuganj Fertiliser and Chemical Company Limited, Urea Fertiliser Factory Limited, Polash Urea Fertiliser Factory Limited, Natural Gas Fertiliser Factory Limited and Chit-

tagong Urea Fertiliser Limited.“We have no alternative but to shut

down the fertiliser factories for a cer-tain period of time to ensure supply of gas to power plants,” Petrobangla Chairman Hossain Monsur said.

He said the decision was taken on the instruction of Prime Minister’s Ad-viser Taw� q-e-Elahi Chowdhury and State Minister for Power, Energy and Mineral Resources Nasrul Hamid.

“We will be able to supply an addi-tional 200mmcfd (million cubic feet per day) of gas after halting operation in those six factories,” he said.

KAFCO Corporate Planning Wing’s Deputy General Manager Kamal Uddin said if gas supply was suspended the com-pany would count a daily loss in Tk5 crore.

The T-20 World Cup Cricket will be held in Bangladesh from March 16 to April 6. The seven fertiliser factories are now being supplied 243 mmcfd of gas against their demand for 289 mmcfd, according to the Petrobangla o� cial.

KAFCO is a 100% export-oriented international joint venture company while the rest are state-owned.

Most of the sectors like industries, CNG stations, households, power plants and fertiliser factories are now facing gas crisis due to shortfall of over 500mmcfd gas forcing Petrobangla to go for rationing the fuel.

Currently, the CNG stations remain closed for four hours every day with a gas supply of 110mmcfd against the de-mand for 130 mmcfd. l

Kidney Institute Hospital lags in transplant proceduresn Moniruzzaman Uzzal

The National Institute of Kidney Dis-ease and Urology (NIKDU) Hospital has been lagging behind in carrying out kidney transplant procedures, with only 27 kidney transplant procedures taking place at the hospital since it was established in 2001.

The number is a stark contrast to more than 100 kidney transplants be-ing carried out during the last two years at the Kidney Foundation Hospital and Research Institute and the Bangaband-hu Sheikh Mujib Medical University.

Several kidney specialists told the Dhaka Tribune that chronic kidney dis-eases have emerged as a deadly threat to Bangladesh.

Around two crore people su� er from some sort of kidney disease, with 16%-18% of those patients su� ering from chronic kidney disease.

Around 40,000 people reportedly die each year from chronic kidney dis-eases, while 20,000-30,000 more pa-tients su� er from acute kidney failure.

The NIKDU o� ers cabin, medicine and all medical investigation at the hospital free of cost to all chronic kid-ney failure patients, while patients reportedly need around Tk50,000 for additional diagnostic tests that are not available at the hospital. On the other hand, patients require Tk3.5 lakh to Tk7 lakh for treatment at private hospitals.

The low costs, however, have failed to encourage patients to seek service at the national institute.

Seeking anonymity, several kidney specialists told the Dhaka Tribune that political intervention had prevented the appointment of the right person

to run the institute and gain patients’ con� dence.

However, Professor Zamanul Islam Bhuiyan, director of NIKDU, denied the allegation and said: “We are not getting enough donors for the transplant for the end-stage kidney failure patients.”

He said the number of kidney transplants across the country had decreased since the illegal business of kidney transplant was exposed in Joypurhat in 2011. Several cases were lodged against specialist doctors, nurs-es and locals who were involved with the illegal practice, Zamanul added.

Saying that relatives of kidney fail-ure patients were afraid to donate their kidneys, the NIKDU director added that it would take more time to achieve the con� dence of the patients.

He, however, admitted that it was partially true that the number of trans-plants was low at the national institute, but added that the NIKDU had been providing healthcare services to thou-sands of kidney and urology patients in its hospital.

With the existing situation persist-ing, Bangladesh will join the rest of the world in celebrating World Kidney Day 2014 today. The theme this year is: “Chronic Kidney Disease (CKD) and ageing.”

Professor MA Samad, president of Kidney Awareness Monitoring and Pre-vention Society (KAMPS), said patients who su� er kidney failure had to live on regular dialysis (haemodialysis or peritoneal dialysis) or by transplanting their kidney.

He said patients had to spend around Tk4-6 lakhs annually for hae-modialysis, Tk4-5 lakh for peritoneal

dialysis; while the costs for a kidney transplant was Tk3.5 lakh to Tk7 lakh and over 1 lakh taka was also needed annually for medicine.

Professor Dr Harun-Ur-Rashid, chairman of Kidney Foundation Hos-pital and Research Institute, told the Dhaka Tribune that the government had enacted the human organ trans-plant act in 1999, but was yet to formu-late the rules and regulations.

A national committee, formed fol-lowing the Joypurhat scandal in 2011 and headed by Dr Harun, prepared a set of rules and regulation and submit-ted it to the health ministry more than a year ago. However, the law ministry recommended that the rules be revised before forming an updated act.

Dr Harun said the number of do-nors had decreased because of legal barriers. In order to save thousands of patients su� ering from kidney failure, the government should launch a mass awareness programme for the relatives of brain-dead patients to donate their organs, he added.

However, it was not possible under the existing law, and new rules and reg-ulations needed to be formed, he also said.

Professor Dr Ra� qul Alam, president of Renal Association of Bangladesh, told the Dhaka Tribune that the health ministry should take necessary steps to � nalise the rules and regulations of the existing human organ transplant act of 1999.

The lack of rules was discourag-ing potential donors, he said, and es-timated that the number of kidney transplants had halved in the last three years. l

Patients lie in bed at a makeshift illegal cancer hospital busted yesterday by a mobile court at Mohakhali. Right, a patient assisted by a relative leaves the fake hospital after the RAB drive

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Father of Mohiuddin Ahad, who was picked up by men identifying themselves as RAB members, breaks down in tear as family members formed a human chain in front of the National Press Club yesterday to press authorities for � nding his whereabouts NASHIRUL ISLAM

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Local food importers searching for new sources following Ukraine crisisWheat price jumps 15% following the trouble in the east European countryn Kayes Sohel

Worried over the ongoing crisis in Ukraine, Bangladeshi importers are now searching for new sources across the globe to purchase food grains, most-ly wheat, to meet the local demand.

Despite the peak season for import-ing food grains from the troubled east European country, all the advance sale o� ers has almost been halted due to the unrest.

As a result, the country’s food grain importers are not being able to place any purchase order to import any prod-uct from Ukraine.

Bangladesh imports a large volume of wheat from Ukraine, which is up to 30% of the total imported wheat while two other grains--oil seed and yellow peas -- are also imported from Ukraine, according to the importers.

“Now Ukrainian and Russian trad-ers are not o� ering any advance sale,” said Abul Bashar Chowdhury, chair-man of Masud & Brothers, a Chittagong based-company, which has long been purchasing grains from Ukraine.

Following Ukraine crisis, local im-porters are also fretted over rising pric-es of wheat, oil seed and yellow peas in the global market.

Since the beginning of the tension in Ukraine, prices of wheat jumped by 15% to US$360 a tonne, yellow peas rose to $410 a tonne from nearly $370 and oil seed to $600 a tonne from $530, according to the local importers.

Ukraine was the fourth biggest seller of corn in last year and is set to be the sixth largest wheat supplier in 2014.

“As the global grain prices are peak-ing up faster, we are now looking for new sources for purchasing our prod-ucts to meet the local demand,” said Chowdhury.

The prices of agricultural outputs

in Ukraine are also rising as its farmers held back grain to protect themselves against the country’s falling currency.

“Almost all the deals are short-term, which badly hinders the � ow of trades, as they are not at all committed to main-tain the supply chain now,” he said.

“Though it is the right time to pur-chase food grains, traders from both - Russia and Ukraine - have almost halt-ed their o� er. As a result, we are unable to place any purchase order.”

Usually, exports from Ukraine and Russia begin in June-July, each year. But brokers normally start contacting with the potential buyers well before the period start (January-February) for advance sales.

Prices of wheat for delivery in com-

ing May rose by 6% to $6.38 a bushel on the Chicago Board of Trade–the biggest rise for almost 18 months, according to Mohammad Ali, another food import-er at Imam Group. Corn for delivery in May rose by up to 3.7% to a six-month high of $4.81, he said.

“Under the prevailing condition, we are looking for new sources but it is re-ally di� cult for getting competitive al-ternative sources especially for wheat procurement.”

Bangladesh government, however, has no contract with the Ukraine side on the wheat deal, according to food department sources.

Buyers across the globe are worried whether the Ukraine will keep up its large exports of wheat and corn following Rus-

sia’s occupation of the Crimean region.Commodity price moves up since

Russia alarmed the Western world by stepping up its military presence in Crimea, a peninsula at Black Sea, but mainly in the soft commodities of wheat and corn, where prices have in the past week risen 9% and 8% respectively.

According to the New Zealand based � nancial service provider ANZ’s com-modities desk, Russia and Ukraine - long referred to as the bread basket of Europe - are forecast to export 26.5mn tonnes of wheat in the 2013-14 market-ing season, accounting for 17% of world supply.

And in case of corn, Ukraine itself is a top � ve corn producer, meeting about 16% of global supply. l

www.dhakatribune.com/business THURSDAY, MARCH 13, 2014

B3 How China’s o� cial bank card is used to smuggle money

B4 WeChat revolution: Chi-na’s ‘killer app’ speaks to the masses

Banks asked to pay import bills on timen Tribune Report

The scheduled commercial banks have been asked to pay the bills on maturity of the import letter of credit (LC) they opened. They were also reminded of the penalty applicable as per law in case of default in payment.

Bangladesh Bank issued a circular yesterday, asking the banks to comply with the LC payment obligations amid allegations that some banks were mak-ing unwanted delays in payment.

As a result, the image of the country’s banks is being tarnished abroad as well as imports are becoming expensive due to increased interest and foreign bank con� rmation charges, said the circular.

“The increased import costs due to this type of irregularity directly a� ect the prices of goods, which hampers the public interest,” it said. l

Padma Cement wraps up business n Kayes Sohel

Padma Cement, a junk company listed on the Dhaka Stock Exchange, has de-cided to wrap up its business after in-curring losses over the years.

“The company is going to be wind-ing-up,” it said in a statement yester-day. This is the � rst listed company in Bangladesh to be winding up.

Around nine years into its commer-cial operation since April 2001, the company located at Baghabari in Sir-ajganj has suspended its production.

The winding up of a company re-quires the termination of legal exis-tence through stopping its current business. For this reason the assets of the company will be distributed among the shareholders as well as creditors as laid down in the company act.

The company asked its sharehold-ers to contact with o� cial liquidator of

Padma Cement with proper documents before March 21, 2014.

Nobody from the company and its liquidator M Moksadul Islam were available for comments even after sending text messages. The DSE had sent the stock to the OTC (over the counter market) in 2010 after its pro-duction suspension.

Later, its land was rented out to AR Cement, but later in 2011 banks con� s-cated its land and sold to Deshband-hu Cement. The company owed Tk40 crore to banks.

Since 2003, the company gave no div-idend to its shareholders, but in listing year 2002 it announced dividend payout.

Incorporated in 1998 as a private limited company, it subsequently con-verted into public limited company with an authorised capital of Tk30 crore. After completion of its IPO the paid up capital stood at Tk 27.6 crore.

It produced only port-land cement. The production capacity of the compa-ny stood at 720 metric tonnes per day. The brand name of the product was “DOLPHIN.”

In 2009, Bangladesh Securities and Exchange Commission detected � nan-cial statement anomalies and asked to explain their position.

During the year, the net operating loss was reduced to some extent but the accumulated loss of the company as of September 30, 2008 stood at Tk26 crore.

Though the total assets of the com-pany was higher than that of total lia-bilities, the then existing liabilities of the company was more than Tk11 crore against assets of Tk3.7 crore.

These factors raised question as to whether the company will be able to continue as a going concern in the near future. l

BB to step up bank vault monitoringn Jebun Nesa Alo

Bangladesh Bank has decided to launch a massive monitoring to ensure securi-ty of bank vaults across the country.

Actions will be taken against respec-tive banks if the inspection teams � nd any breach of safety directives made by the central bank, it said.

In the wake of two recent burglaries in Sonali Bank, the central bank came up with the decision at a meeting yes-terday held at its o� ce in Dhaka.

The bank inspection department of Bangladesh Bank will check vault safe-ty measures.

The inspection will be conducted in addition to the department’s regular inspection to � nancial activities of dif-ferent bank branches.

"If any branch is found vulnerable and not complying with the Bangla-desh Bank directive on safety issue, pu-nitive action will be taken," said Deputy Governor SK Sur Chowdhury.

Bangladesh Bank issued a circular on January 27 asking all the banks to take every necessary stepto ensure their vaults’ safety.

Following the burglary in Sonali Bank’s Kishorganj branch, the circular was issued.

It mentioned that most of the banks

didn’t follow the central bank’s instruc-tion on safety of depositors’ money kept at vaults despite repeated warn-ings from Bangladesh Bank.

Thus, the negligence in safety steps had resulted in looting of depositors’ money breaking into the bank vaults, the central bank added.

If Sonali Bank stepped up vault se-curity after the Kishoreganj branch heist, the following incident of same kind at a Bogra branch of the bank could have been avoided, according to Bangladesh Bank.

On Tuesday, the central bank served a notice to Sonali Bank’s managing di-rectorPradip Kumar Duttato let it know what safety steps were taken after the Kishoreganj branch burglary.

While talking with the Dhaka Tri-bune, Pradip Kumar Dutta didn’t an-swer to the question if any additional security steps were taken after the Kishorganj incidence in January.

Rather, he talked about the insurance coverage of the vaults and relocation of branches as part of security e� orts.

“Sonali Bankcancelled insurance policy for its vault safetyafter the gov-ernment’s instruction as premiums were costing huge amounts to the bank,’’ said Pradip Kumar Dutta said.

He said letter was to the government to revive insurance coverage, and the matter had been discussed with Sadha-ran Bima Corporation too.

As far as insurance coverage is con-cerned, the insurance on the money deposited at the vaults has to be cov-ered completely. 

Sonali Bank MD said to ensure vault security they would need torelocate many branches and it involved a long process.

“We have already begun it (reloca-tion process). But for this interim pe-riod, we will have to increase securi-tyguards.”

Under the structural security measures set by Bangladesh Bank, banks are to set up security-tested

B3 COLUMN 5

A tractor makes pits next to a check point in Chongar, Ukraine blocking the entrance to Crimea recently. Spreading out from the road by the checkpoint there is a perfect row of holes dug into the earth, each about half-a-metre wide, in what looked like the � rst steps of installing a border fence. Signs nearby warned of mines and were marked "Stop! Danger to Life!" with a skull-and-crossbones. In Chongar, lives have paused lately due to fear of any possible violence AFP

Citycell pays Tk26.5cr, seeks more time for rest outstandingn Muhammad Zahidul Islam

Citycell, the country’s oldest mobile phone operator, has so far deposited Tk26.5 crore, out of an outstanding amount of Tk249 crore, which has been lying pending with the company during the few quarters.

The outstanding amount includes spectrum charges, revenue sharing and social obligation fund (SoF), 2G license renewal fee and other unpaid dues. The unpaid amount has amount-ed to Tk255.3 crore including the late payment fees.

“On Monday last, we deposited some money to the mobile regulator, exclud-ing the 2G license renewal fee and the late payment fee, seeking more time for the payment of the whole outstanding amounts,” Mehbub Chowdhury, Chief Executive O� cer (CEO) of Citycell told the Dhaka Tribune yesterday.

Citycell hopes that Bangladesh Tele-phone Regulatory Commission (BTRC) will give them more time to pay the rest of the dues including 2G license renewal fee and other dues.

On February 3, the telecom regula-

tor issued a show cause notice to City-Cell asking why its license should not be cancelled following its failure to pay Tk255.3 crore as dues.

BTRC had issued the notice under the Telecommunication Act asking the operator to explain the matter within 30 days.

Later on, the mobile operator held meetings with the high-ups of the government and subsequently, the Citycell got more time for paying the dues for 2G renewal fees only if they deposit the unpaid amount of the rev-enue sharing and other charges.

Citycell has claimed that they are yet to get the full spectrum, which BTRC allocated to them and that’s why they will not pay the full money for it.

“BTRC allocated 10 Megahertz spec-trum for us for 15 years but we are get-ting only 6.5 Megahertz even after two years,” a senior executive informed.

Citycell renewed its 2G license on August 2012 and received the license to operation for the next 15 years.

The op erator had 13.65 lakh sub-scribers till the end of  December last year. l

Diploma engineers to be entitled to proposed Tk100cr entrepreneurship fundn Tribune Report

The diploma engineers who are inter-ested to become small and medium en-trepreneurs will be entitled to the re� -nance fund of Tk100 crore Bangladesh Bank decided to form for development of new entrepreneurs.

Bangladesh Bank Governor Atiur Rahman made the announcement yes-terday at the Entrepreneurship Devel-opment Workshop arranged by Insti-tute of Diploma Engineers, Bangladesh (IDEB) in Dhaka. Recently, Dhaka Cham-ber of Commerce and Industry (DCCI) took a project of developing 2,000 new entrepreneurs while Bangladesh Bank supporting with the re� nance fund.

The IDEB project that aims to make

1,000 new entrepreneurs within the year 2015 will be also entitled to get � -nance from the fund, said the governor.

The DCCI and Bangladesh Bank are working to � nd out future entrepre-neurs throughout the country. This project has created hype across the country and DCCI gets huge response especially from the young people.

“We formed some re� nance fund for entrepreneurs with policy support. There is a re� nance fund of Tk600 crore. New entrepreneurs could take loan up to Tk50 lakh from the fund. Under the re� -nance fund of SME sector, 15% has been dedicated for the women,” Atiur said.

BB has another re� nance fund of Tk200 crore for agricultural products and green banking, he said. l

CHALLENGES WEIGHING ON GDP TARGET

Disrupted supply of fuel

Hampered privatesector expenditure

Depressed agricultural output

IMF review mission due on March 19n Tribune Report

A review mission of the International Monetary Fund (IMF) will visit Dhaka from March 19-26 under its Extended Credit Facility (ECF) programme.

O� cials fear that the IMF mission is coming to Dhaka to tag a condition for slashing down the total subsidies un-der its ECF programme.

It also wanted to increase the price of the gas and electricity before the budget of the next � scal year 2014-15.

During the visit, three-member IMF re view mission led-by ECF mission chief Rodrigo Cubero, is scheduled to meet � nance minister AMA Muhith, Bangladesh Bank governor Atiur Rah-man, and Chairman of National Board of Revenue Ghulam Hossain.

The mission will examine the proposal of increasing energy price, risk of budget management, reduce the subsidy of the Bangladesh Petroleum Corporation and appointment of the foreign auditor and control of hard core loans and development of the state-owned banks including the security of vaults.

Those conditions will be examined for the release of � fth tranche of loan, according � nance ministry o� cials. l

To install closed-circuit camera inside and outside the vault and bank buildings;

To install security alarm system inside the vault room in next 15 days;

To build steel wall around the vault;

To increase security manpower;

To appoint a retired army o� cer for monitoring security measures;

To warn all branches to ensure security.

Sonali Bank’s decision to step up security measures

Muhith: Risks remain in achieving 7.2% GDP targetn Asif Showkat Kallol

The country has some risks towards achieving 7.2% GDP growth target in the current � scal year, Finance Minister AMA Muhith told parliament yesterday.

He said the growth target would not be di� cult to achieve if “the pri-vate sector investment was not ham-pered by the destructive political pro-grammes and the expected agricultural growth can be achieved.”

The minister mentioned as possible risks that the insu� cient fuel supply which could hurt a� ect private sector investment and the current negative � ow of remittance which might restrict the expansion of private consumption expenditure.

He was placing � rst quarter (Ju-ly-September) report on the implemen-tation of the current � scal budget.

Revenue target also could not be achieved in the current � scal due to political instability and ongoing global recession, said AMA Muhith in reply to a question of Awami League MP Mus-ta� zur Rahman.

The major challenge during the rest of the � scal would be to boost private sector investment and maintain mac-roeconomic stability, he added.

Muhith however said despite the risks, the government had decided not to revise down the economic growth target.

“The industrial development indi-ces have already showed uptrend, and if it continues along with a good har-vest of Aman-Boro, GDP target could be attained.”

Earlier, the international Monetary Fund had forecasted Bangladesh’s GDP to grow at 5.5% this � scal while the World Bank projected 5.7%.

The total budget expenditure during the � rst quarter stood at Tk31,890 crore, which was 11.4% more than the same period last � scal. Only 14.3% of the � rst

quarter expenditure target was achieved.The amount spent in the July-Sep-

tember of last � scal was Tk28,638 crore. For the current � scal, the total outlay of budget was announced Tk222,483.15 crore. In � rst quarter, Tk25,826 crore of revenue budget was spent, up 9.5% from one year ago.

The annual development pro-gramme (ADP) implementation rate in-creased by 20.2% this year compared to previous year’s � rst quarter.

This � rst quarter, ADP expenditure amounted to Tk6,064 crore while it was Tk5,046 crore one year ago.

In the quarter 1 this � scal, 10 big ministries and divisions spent only 14% of their allocation. These minis-tries and divisions received 44.1% allo-cation of total ADP oulay.

Of them, Power Division spent 7%, Road Division 9% and Bridges Division 17.7%, Local Government Division 12.28% and Ministry of Primary Education 14%. The railway ministry spent 51%, the high-est among others during the quarter. The country paid a total of Tk2,758 crore loans in the � srt three months of the � scal. Last year’s quarter 1, it was Tk1,677 crore. l

ANALYST

B2 Stock Thursday, March 13, 2014DHAKA TRIBUNE

Stocks stay � at with persisting volatility n Tribune Report

Stocks closed flat further with persisting volatility yesterday as late selling pressure mainly on banks and textiles issues cut early gains.

Although the market began the session on a positive note but lat-er it saw a downward movement especially in the last 90 minutes of trade.

After rising around 20 points, the benchmark DSEX was down 12 points or 0.3% to close at 4,660, after edging higher in the previous session. It is its lowest since Janu-ary 22 this year.

Shariah Index, DSES, gained marginally over 3 points or 0.4% to 1,015. The blue-chip comprising DS30 ended at 1,681 with fractional rise of 0.6 points.

Chittagong Stock Exchange Se-lective Category Index, CSCX, fell 37 points to close at 9,099.

Heavyweight banks were down by 1.7%, led by United Commercial Bank that dropped almost 10% due to adjustment of its cash dividend. Textile sector also lost its luster with a loss of 1.2%.

Turnover at DSE stood at Tk450

crore, recovering well from previ-ous session’s two month low turn-over and was 34% higher over the previous session.

“Coupled with ongoing volatili-ty and apparent lack of directions, market continued mimicking last several sessions. Resultantly, the bourse ended � at once more time, approaching the same scenario for eighth session,” said IDLC Invest-ment in its daily market analysis.

Marginal selling pressure in some mid cap scrips, especially bank sector, pulled down the mar-ket at the later part of trading, it said.

Among other major sectors, tele-communications had the highest gain of 0.8%, followed by power 0.5% and pharmaceuticals 0.5%. Financial institutions and food and allied sectors closed almost � at with no signi� cant movement.

Padma Oil continued to top turnover leader with shares worth Tk44 crore changing hands, fol-lowed by Bangladesh Shipping Corporation, Meghna Petroleum, Square Pharmaceuticals, Olympic Industries, Bangladesh Submarine Cable, Grameenphone and Singer Bangladesh. l

News, analysis and recent disclosersPRIMEINSUR: The Company has informed that the Board of Directors of the Company has approved to purchase � oor space measuring gross � oor area of 4,236 sft. along with 2 car parking spaces at Unique Heights (10th � oor), 117, Kazi Nazrul Islam Avenue, Ramna, Dhaka at a total cost of Tk. 5,30,30,656.00 only.REPUBLIC: As per Regulation 30 of DSE Listing Regulations, the Company has informed that a meeting of the Board of Directors will be held on March 16, 2014 at 3:30 PM to consider, among others, audited � nancial statements of the Company for the year ended on December 31, 2013.

From BIASL Desk: Price Correction after Record Day: BRACBANK’s price correction was 14.98% (taka 4.30) against 10% cash and 10% stock Dividend (1+2.87=taka 3.87 per share ap-prox.). After record day restated EPS is taka 2.91 and NAV per share is taka 25.80.

RIGHT SHARE:ARAMITCEM: Subscription 23.03.2014 to 17.04.2014. Record date for entitlement of rights share: 09.01.2014.

RUPALILIFE: Subscription 06.04.2014 to 05.05.2014. Record date for entitlement of rights share: 16.01.2014. BRACBANK: Subscrip-tion 20.04.2014 to 15.05.2014. Record date for entitlement of rights share: 10.02.2014. GENNEXT: Subscription 18.03.2014 to 09.04.2014, Record date: 25.02.2014.

IPO Subscription: Far Chemical Industries Limited subscription date 10-16 February 2014, NRB upto 25 March 2014. At per, face value taka 10 and market lot 500. The Peninsula Chittagong Limited subscription date 30 March-03 April 2014, NRB upto 12 April 2014. @ taka 30, face value taka 10 and market lot 200. Shahjibazar Power Co. Limited subscription date 06-04 April 2014, NRB upto 19 April 2014. @ taka 25, face value taka 10 and market lot 200.

Dividend/AGMARAMITCEM: 10% cash, AGM: 10.04.2014, Record Date: 20.03.2014.MTBL: 10% stock, AGM: 10.04.2014, Record date: 20.03.2014. SAFKOSPINN: 10% stock, AGM: 12.04.2014, Record Date: 20.03.2014. UNIQUEHRL: 25% cash, EGM and AGM:

08.04.2014, Record Date for EGM and AGM: 18.03.2014.BANKASIA: 10% stock, AGM: 31.03.2014, Record date: 16.03.2014. ULC: 5% cash & 10% stock, AGM: 10.04.2014, Record date: 18.03.2014. PRIMEBANK: 12.50% cash, 30.03.2014, Record date: 13.03.2014. UNIONCAP: 10% stock, AGM: 31.03.2014, Record date: 13.03.2014.SOUTHEASTB: 16% cash and 5% stock, AGM: 31.03.2014, RD: 13.03.2014. DUTCHBANGL: 40% cash dividend for the General Public Shareholders and Foreign Sponsors/Shareholders, AGM: 30.03.2014, RD: 13.03.2014. LAFSURCEML: No dividend, AGM: 10.06.2014, RD: 07.04.2014.UTTARAFIN: 30% cash, AGM: 30.04.2014, Record date: 12.03.2014.EBL: 20% cash, AGM: 31.03.2014, RD: 11.03.2014.PRIMEFIN: 15% cash, AGM: 30.03.2014, RD: 11.03.2014. UCBL: 20% cash, AGM: 17.04.2014, RD: 11.03.2014.PUBALIBANK: 10% stock, AGM: 25.03.2014, RD: 10.03.2014.

CSE LOSERS

Company Closing (% change)

Aver-age (%

change)

Closing average Closing Daily high Daily low Turnover

in millionLatest

EPSLatest

PE

Eastern Bank - A -9.94 -9.23 28.33 28.10 29.00 28.10 0.193 4.15 6.8UCBL - A -9.78 -8.80 25.19 24.90 26.60 24.90 19.712 3.66 6.9Islami Ins.BD-A -9.37 -9.31 30.00 30.00 30.00 30.00 0.030 1.60 18.8Sa� o Spinning-A -5.23 -5.07 29.03 29.00 29.20 29.00 0.784 1.14 25.5Prime Islami Life -A -5.00 -2.52 112.10 112.10 112.10 112.10 0.011 4.95 22.6IFIC Bank - A -4.49 -3.36 32.18 31.90 32.80 31.80 1.766 4.33 7.4Prime Finance-A -4.49 -6.15 23.64 23.40 24.00 23.30 2.630 1.10 21.5PragatiLife Insu. -A -4.41 -4.08 229.50 229.50 229.50 229.50 0.115 2.38 96.4AB Bank - A -3.46 -0.07 28.12 27.90 29.40 27.70 0.885 1.65 17.0

DSE LOSERS

Company Closing (% change)

Aver-age (%

change)

Closing average Closing Daily high Daily low Turnover

in millionLatest

EPSLatest

PE

UCBL - A -9.82 -8.92 25.13 24.80 26.70 24.80 60.001 3.66 6.9Eastern Bank - A -8.77 -9.44 28.12 28.10 28.80 27.90 5.258 4.15 6.8Midas Financing-Z -7.57 -7.43 29.42 29.30 29.30 28.70 0.071 -5.96 -veEBL NRB M.F.-A -6.33 -3.80 7.60 7.40 7.50 7.40 0.019 0.44 17.3Prime Finance-A -4.92 -3.95 23.59 23.20 24.20 22.00 18.554 1.10 21.4Envoy Textiles Ltd-N -3.91 -2.56 52.57 51.60 54.00 50.00 33.585 1.12 46.9Northern G Insur-A -3.85 -2.84 45.58 45.00 47.00 42.20 2.910 3.04 15.0Mithun Knitting -A -3.84 0.34 100.53 97.70 105.00 93.00 37.420 2.42 41.5AB Bank - A -3.81 -0.74 28.24 27.80 29.00 26.50 10.870 1.65 17.1

CSE TURNOVER LEADERS

Company Volume shares

Value in million

% of total turnover

Daily closing

Price change

Daily opening

Daily high

Daily low

Daily average

BSC-A 65,840 41.96 10.37 639.00 2.93 620.80 646.00 622.00 637.30Padma Oil Co. -A 116,505 40.35 9.97 349.80 3.71 337.30 350.40 341.00 346.33Square Pharma -A 83,448 24.02 5.94 288.50 1.02 285.60 289.30 285.50 287.87BD Submarine Cable-A 103,700 23.01 5.69 221.90 1.56 218.50 225.30 212.00 221.93UCBL - A 782,662 19.71 4.87 24.90 -9.78 27.60 26.60 24.90 25.19Square Textile -A 109,400 12.68 3.13 114.10 -1.64 116.00 117.50 113.00 115.91LafargeS Cement-Z 249,000 11.73 2.90 47.50 3.49 45.90 47.90 46.00 47.11Jamuna Oil -A 47,953 11.31 2.79 235.90 1.46 232.50 237.80 234.00 235.89Beach Hatchery -A 309,296 9.81 2.42 31.70 5.67 30.00 32.30 30.20 31.72Singer BD -A 42,812 9.50 2.35 222.20 3.45 214.80 226.00 215.00 221.98BEXIMCO Ltd. -A 252,488 8.23 2.03 32.30 -0.62 32.50 33.10 32.20 32.61Grameenphone-A 37,600 8.07 1.99 214.40 0.70 212.90 216.50 213.70 214.70Beximco Pharma -A 148,945 7.84 1.94 52.00 -1.70 52.90 53.50 51.10 52.60Meghna Petroleum -A 24,243 7.00 1.73 288.30 1.12 285.10 292.00 286.00 288.72Delta Life Insu. -A 26,850 6.93 1.71 256.80 -1.12 259.70 261.30 255.60 258.01

DSE TURNOVER LEADERS

Company Volume shares

Value in million

% of total turnover

Daily closing

Price change

Daily opening

Daily high

Daily low

Daily average

Padma Oil Co. -A 1,297,637 448.32 9.95 349.30 3.53 337.40 350.00 308.50 345.49BSC-A 362,075 230.88 5.12 638.75 2.57 622.75 644.75 623.00 637.66Meghna Petroleum -A 740,033 213.56 4.74 287.70 0.74 285.60 292.00 260.90 288.58Square Pharma -A 714,993 206.08 4.57 288.20 1.09 285.10 294.00 278.30 288.23Olympic Ind. -A 713,391 159.13 3.53 223.20 1.50 219.90 225.70 205.00 223.06BD Submarine Cable-A 620,318 137.61 3.05 221.40 1.56 218.00 227.00 200.00 221.83Grameenphone-A 591,441 126.93 2.82 214.30 0.70 212.80 216.60 202.00 214.61Singer BD -A 548,287 121.64 2.70 223.20 4.15 214.30 225.50 214.30 221.85Jamuna Oil -A 514,000 121.01 2.68 235.10 0.94 232.90 236.60 225.00 235.43LafargeS Cement-Z 2,450,080 115.47 2.56 47.70 4.15 45.80 48.00 45.10 47.13Southeast Bank-A 4,915,417 108.47 2.41 21.90 -2.67 22.50 22.50 20.50 22.07Square Textile -A 803,767 92.51 2.05 113.90 -1.98 116.20 117.80 108.00 115.10Delta Life Insu. -A 352,050 90.74 2.01 256.30 -0.93 258.70 261.40 255.90 257.76UCBL - A 2,387,378 60.00 1.33 24.80 -9.82 27.50 26.70 24.80 25.13LankaBangla Fin. -A 798,414 51.22 1.14 64.10 3.39 62.00 65.60 56.00 64.15

CSE GAINERS

Company Closing (% change)

Aver-age (%

change)

Closing average Closing Daily high Daily low Turnover

in millionLatest

EPSLatest

PE

Eastern Cables-Z 9.94 9.52 147.42 149.30 149.30 142.00 0.486 1.40 105.3Apex SpinningA 9.69 7.61 103.61 106.40 98.10 103.00 0.166 1.85 56.0Samorita Hospital -A 9.27 9.72 103.69 103.70 104.30 100.00 1.452 2.74 37.8Hakkani P& Paper -B 7.67 7.52 32.30 32.30 33.00 30.10 0.598 0.28 115.4Kay & Que (BD) -Z 7.43 8.60 18.95 18.80 19.00 18.80 0.038 -0.89 -veAziz PipesZ 7.33 7.33 20.50 20.50 20.50 20.50 0.010 0.59 34.7Samata LeatheR -Z 7.14 7.00 29.96 30.00 30.80 28.60 0.375 -0.04 -veCVO PetroChem RL-Z 7.11 5.70 887.91 889.00 892.00 885.00 1.021 -4.06 -veStandard Ceramic -A 7.10 7.84 49.77 49.80 49.90 49.50 0.075 1.06 47.0Republic Insu.-A 6.50 6.08 45.72 45.90 46.30 43.80 0.297 3.03 15.1

DSE GAINERS

Company Closing (% change)

Aver-age (%

change)

Closing average Closing Daily high Daily low Turnover

in millionLatest

EPSLatest

PE

Samorita Hospital -A 9.94 9.28 103.98 105.10 105.10 92.00 24.272 2.74 37.9Eastern Cables-Z 9.83 11.30 149.92 150.90 151.10 143.30 16.356 1.40 107.1Hakkani P& Paper -B 9.60 7.76 32.51 33.10 33.20 31.00 2.715 0.28 116.1Apex SpinningA 9.21 8.64 102.88 104.30 105.00 98.00 17.449 1.85 55.6Standard Ceramic -A 7.94 6.39 49.65 50.30 51.10 43.00 1.317 1.06 46.8Republic Insu.-A 6.78 6.14 45.48 45.70 47.00 40.00 16.720 3.03 15.0Monno Ceramic -B 6.23 5.66 36.00 35.80 36.60 31.00 7.842 0.38 94.7Samata LeatheR -Z 6.07 7.29 30.04 29.70 30.80 29.00 0.826 -0.04 -veAnlima Yarn -A 5.69 6.23 26.07 26.00 27.00 23.00 3.053 0.80 32.6Eastern InsurA 5.64 4.69 40.88 41.20 42.50 37.00 1.683 2.60 15.7

SECTORAL TURNOVER SUMMARY

Sector DSE CSE TotalMillion Taka % change Million Taka % change Million Taka % change

Bank 398.54 8.84 40.70 9.85 439.24 8.93NBFI 153.65 3.41 12.29 2.97 165.94 3.37Investment 73.52 1.63 3.48 0.84 77.00 1.56Engineering 447.35 9.92 28.14 6.81 475.49 9.66Food & Allied 288.67 6.40 25.69 6.22 314.36 6.39Fuel & Power 968.05 21.48 71.34 17.27 1039.39 21.12Jute 8.86 0.20 0.00 8.86 0.18Textile 430.38 9.55 36.00 8.71 466.38 9.48Pharma & Chemical 443.71 9.84 52.51 12.71 496.22 10.08Paper & Packaging 2.72 0.06 3.01 0.73 5.72 0.12Service 36.41 0.81 3.17 0.77 39.58 0.80Leather 85.43 1.90 7.98 1.93 93.41 1.90Ceramic 22.13 0.49 2.79 0.68 24.92 0.51Cement 227.42 5.05 18.86 4.57 246.28 5.00Information Technology 31.88 0.71 3.58 0.87 35.46 0.72General Insurance 78.12 1.73 2.21 0.53 80.32 1.63Life Insurance 205.46 4.56 8.83 2.14 214.29 4.35Telecom 264.54 5.87 31.09 7.52 295.62 6.01Travel & Leisure 48.07 1.07 7.35 1.78 55.42 1.13Miscellaneous 292.02 6.48 54.12 13.10 346.13 7.03Debenture 0.71 0.02 0.04 0.01 0.75 0.02

Daily capital market highlights

DSE Broad Index : 4660.52575 (-) 0.26% ▲

DSE Shariah Index : 1015.15777 (+) 0.34% ▲

DSE - 30 Index : 1681.76077 (+) 0.03% ▲

CSE All Share Index: 14441.7696 (-) 0.23% ▼

CSE - 30 Index : 12225.2691 (-) 0.41% ▼

CSE Selected Index : 9099.6542 (-) 0.41% ▼

DSE key features March 12, 2014Turnover (Million Taka)

4,507.60

Turnover (Volume)

73,205,749

Number of Contract 99,169

Traded Issues 289

Issue Gain (Avg. Price Basis)

469

Issue Loss (Avg. Price Basis)

110

Unchanged Issue (Avg. Price Basis)

10

Market Capital Equity (Billion. Tk.)

2,304.53

Market Capital Equity (Billion US$)

27.93

CSE key features March 12, 2014Turnover (Million Taka) 405.95

Turnover (Volume) 7,114,046

Number of Contract 14,918

Traded Issues 226

Issue Gain (Avg. Price Basis)

129

Issue Loss (Avg. Price Basis)

92

Unchanged Issue (Avg. Price Basis)

4

Market Capital Equity (Billion. Tk.)

2,202.87

Market Capital Equity (Billion US$)

26.70

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

Marginal selling pressure in some mid cap scrips, especially bank sector, pulled down the market at the later part of trading

How China’s o� cial bank card is used to smuggle moneyn Reuters, Macau

Growing numbers of Chinese are us-ing the country’s state-backed bank-cards to illegally spirit billions of dol-lars abroad, a Reuters examination has found.

This underground money is � ow-ing across the border into the gambling hub of Macau, a former Portuguese col-ony that like Hong Kong is an autono-mous region of China. And the conduit for the cash is the Chinese government-supported payment card network, Chi-na UnionPay.

In a warren of gritty streets around Macau’s ritzy casino resorts, hundreds of neon-lit jeweler, watch and pawn shops are doing a brisk business giving mainland Chinese customers cash by allowing them to use UnionPay cards to make fake purchases - a way of evading China’s strict currency-export controls.

On a recent day at the Choi Seng Jeweler and Watches company, a mid-dle-aged woman strode to the coun-ter past dusty shelves of watches. She handed the clerk her UnionPay card and received HK$300,000 ($50,000) in cash. She signed a credit card receipt describing the transaction as a “general sale”, stu� ed the cash into her handbag and strolled over to the Ponte 16 casino next door.

The withdrawal far exceeded the daily limit of 20,000 yuan, or $3,200, in cash that individual Chinese can le-gally move out of the mainland. “Don’t worry,” said a store clerk when asked about the legality of the transaction. “Everyone does this.”

Internal discussion documents prepared by UnionPay and by � nan-cial authorities in Macau and China show these fake sale cash-backs are widespread in such retail stores. The practice violates China’s anti-money-laundering regulations as well as re-strictions on currency exports, accord-ing to Chinese central bank documents reviewed by Reuters. Chinese authori-

ties also fear the UnionPay conduit is being used by corrupt o� cials and business people to send money out of the country.

It’s unclear why the central bank, the Peoples Bank of China (PBOC), hasn’t cracked down harder on the practice, although the documents Reuters re-viewed show the bank was aware it had become a growing problem.

Industry experts point to a weak enforcement culture in China, a reluc-tance to hurt Macau � nancially with 80 percent of the city’s revenues drawn from gambling, and a willingness to tolerate some capital � ight - especially if it can be tracked through names on bank cards. Moreover, the rapid growth of UnionPay, including the spread of its terminals at retail stores across the world, is playing a key role in China’s strategy for making the yuan a global currency.

No one knows for sure how much Chinese money is being channeled il-

legally into Macau. Tam Chi Keong, an assistant professor at the Macau Uni-versity of Science and Technology, puts the total at HK$1.57tn ($202bn) a year through various channels.. Tam says his estimate is based on his analysis of Macau’s � nances and interviews with gambling industry participants.

A senior UnionPay executive said the Shanghai-based company has long been aware of the payment card abuse in Macau and elsewhere, but was lim-ited in its ability to act. That’s because the primary responsibility lies with au-thorities in Macau or any other country where the fraud is taking place, he said.

“The problem you are talking about has existed for several years,” said the executive, who spoke on condition of anonymity. “We have continuously taken measures.”

The government’s sonThough relatively unknown in the West, UnionPay has quietly grown to

become one of the biggest card brands and payment networks in the world, accepted in 142 countries. There are more UnionPay cards in circulation now than any other brand - 3.53 billion, or nearly a quarter of the world’s total, according to the industry newsletter, the Nilson Report. Visa remains the world leader by transaction value with $4.6tn in card transactions in the � rst half of 2013; UnionPay was second with $2.5tn.

If UnionPay poses a problem for Chinese authorities, it is a problem of their own making. The card brand is often seen as an arm of Chinese state policy.

UnionPay was established in 2002 by the PBOC and the State Council or Cabinet. Its founding shareholders were 85 Chinese banks, led by the � ve biggest state-owned banks. Former senior PBOC o� cials still � ll the com-pany’s top ranks, including UnionPay’s current chairman, Su Ning, and its

former president, Xu Luode. They de-clined requests to be interviewed.

UnionPay dominates the card mar-ket in China thanks to a central bank decree that requires all card issuers, including foreign ones, to process their yuan-based transactions through UnionPay’s electronic payment net-work. All Chinese merchants and au-tomated teller machines are required to process their yuan transactions through UnionPay. The World Trade Organization in July 2012 ruled that China was discriminating against for-eign card brands, but it made no spe-ci� c recommendations. Foreign card brands still have to use UnionPay for settlements in China.

UnionPay’s increasing use overseas is part of Beijing’s multi-pronged strat-egy to eventually open up China’s capi-tal account and internationalize the yuan, which is formally known as the renminbi or yuan. Beijing also eased restrictions on many kinds of capital transfers as it gradually loosens up con-trol over the currency, making it easier for money to leave China’s borders. The e� orts have paid dividends. The renminbi has already overtaken the euro to become the second-most used currency in trade � nance, according to data from global transaction services organization SWIFT.

“(China) may be happy to see Union-Pay sweeping di� erent markets across the world in di� erent countries and territories,” said Yan Lixin, head of Fudan University’s China Centre for Anti-Money Laundering Studies in Shanghai. “It is backed up by the gov-ernment. It is the real son of the gov-ernment.”

At the same time, these changes have vastly complicated the compli-ance challenges for UnionPay. While the card system is helping monetary authorities open up the capital account, it is also enabling people to funnel their ill-gotten gains out of China, said Yan. “It’s not the only tool” for money laun-

dering, Yan says, “but it’s a major tool.”Macau is a prime gateway for this

activity. It is the only place in China where casino gambling is legal, and so Chinese gamblers bring vast sums of money here. Because Macau is admin-istered separately from the mainland, there are restrictions on how much currency mainland Chinese can take into the gambling haven. But gamblers � nd ways of skirting currency controls when they cross into Macau. And much of the money these mainlanders osten-sibly take to Macau for gambling, Chi-nese authorities believe, is actually go-ing abroad into bank accounts.

Any steps to clamp down on Union-Pay cashback transactions would likely rattle Macau, because the cash also feeds the casino sector on which the territory’s $43.6bn economy over-whelmingly depends. Macau is now the world’s biggest gambling hub, with revenues seven times those of Las Ve-gas. Last year, gambling revenue rose 19% to $45.2bn. Nearly 40% of that went to the government in taxes.

Beijing is particularly concerned about the role of this capital � ight in the country’s endemic government corruption scandals. An internal re-search report in 2008 by the PBOC identi� ed UnionPay cards as one of the main tools for corrupt individuals to fa-cilitate cross-border transfer of funds. The central bank report said the prac-tice was growing rapidly.

Many card users follow their money abroad. Since the mid-1990s, an esti-mated 16,000 to 18,000 Communist party o� cials, businessmen, CEOs and other individuals have “disappeared” from China, according to a separate PBOC report prepared in 2008 - taking with them some 800bn yuan ($133bn).

But the practice isn’t limited to cor-rupt o� cials. The ubiquitous UnionPay card, with its instant access to piles of cash, has made the task of whisking money out of China far easier for ordi-nary Chinese. l

B3BusinessDHAKA TRIBUNE Thursday, March 13, 2014

BASIC Bank Limited participated in School Banking Conference-2014 at Chittagong for building awareness among the school going children to develop their savings habit and introduce them with banking services. The Bangladesh Bank governor, Dr Atiur Rahman distributed the BASIC school banking gift bags among the school going children at BASIC Bank’s stall recently

Bangladesh IT Talent Contest 2014 held on Tuesday to develop skilled manpower. Overseas Employment attended the award giving ceremony of the contest as chief guest at DIU auditorium

Real estate developer, Sheltech celebrated its 26th anniversary yesterday. Sheltech chairperson Engr Kutubuddin Ahmed, founder-MD Dr Tou� q M. Seraj and director (development) Tanvir Ahmed have cut a cake to mark the anniversary

A school banking conference was held in the Bangladesh Bank colony ground in Chittagong recently. Governor of Bangladesh Bank, Dr Atiur Rahman was present as chief guest in the conference and visited the stall of Pubali Bank Ltd in the presence of Pubali Bank’s DMD, Saiful Alam Khan Chowdhury and GM, Syed Abdul Mazid

Japan � rms raise wages as consumers prepare for tax hiken AFP, Tokyo

Major Japanese � rms, including Toyota and Panasonic, yesterday said they would boost employees’ salaries for the � rst time in years, heeding a call from the prime minister ahead of a sales tax rise next month.

The deal came as companies wrap up annual labour talks known as Shun-to, or the “spring o� ensive”.

The usually low-key negotiations were being closely watched to see if cash-rich � rms would put more mon-ey in workers’ pockets, amid worries about the tax hike slamming the brakes on growth.

Japan’s car sector was a key target, with all eyes on the world’s biggest au-tomaker Toyota which - along with oth-er exporters - posted big pro� ts on the back of sharply weaker yen since Prime Minister Shinzo Abe swept to power in late 2012.

Toyota said it would raise employ-ees’ pay by an average of 2,700 yen ($26) a month, while they would also get an average bonus worth about 6.8 months of their base wage - a common pay structure in Japan.

It was the Camry and Corolla mak-er’s � rst wage hike in six years, and amounted to about a 0.8% rise above current pay.

Among other � rms raising wages were Nissan, Panasonic, Hitachi and Toshiba.

The focus would now shift from blue-chip � rms to see if small and mid-sized companies, which employ the bulk of Japanese workers, follow the lead on pay.

The seemingly small wage hikes are a major development in a country that has su� ered de� ation for years, with consumers rarely facing higher prices for everyday goods.

Abe’s growth blitz, dubbed Abe-nomics, is aimed at reversing falling prices and recent data suggest Tokyo is making headway in stoking lasting in� ation, which would mean higher prices.

Consumers are also getting set for a sales tax rise to 8% next month, up from 5%. The move is seen as crucial to shrinking Japan’s massive national debt, but there are fears it could weigh on consumer spending and slow growth.

Threat of interventionAbe has been calling on � rms to

raise salaries so workers would have more money to spend, a move seen as crucial to making his growth bid work.

On Tuesday, Abe’s point man on the economy, Akira Amari, raised the stakes with an apparent threat to take unspeci� ed action against companies

that don’t jack up wages.The government “will react in some

way” against � rms which are “unco-operative with our policy of creating a virtuous economic cycle,” he told re-porters.

Tabloid newspaper Nikkan Gendai compared Amari’s comments to the

aggressive tactics of Japan’s notorious yakuza gangsters.

Hideshi Nitta, a labour relations manager at top business lobby Keidan-ren, said � rms recognised the need to reverse years of tepid growth.

“For the economy to grow sustain-ably, (Japan) needs to create a virtuous

cycle - bigger pro� ts leading to bigger investment, pay hikes..and better eco-nomic sentiment, which then leads to even larger corporate earnings,” he said.

“This year’s labour negotiations focused more on that macro point of view.”

But concerns gathered pace this week as revised growth data showed the world’s third-largest economy ex-panded at a slower pace than initially thought last year.

Yesterday, a key consumer con� -dence indicator dropped in February, with the data likely to stoke further concerns about spending.

“Any recovery in consumer con� -dence ... will be strongly dependent on an acceleration in wage growth,” London-based Capital Economics said.

Japan’s number-two automaker Nis-san said its employees would get 3,500 yen more a month, and a bonus worth 5.6 months of regular pay.

The electronics sector, hammered by losses in recent years, also moved with six major � rms hiking wages by 2,000 yen a month, their biggest-ever increase. Convenience store operator Lawson has agreed to its � rst wage rise in 12 years.

Bonuses are usually paid out in a lump sum twice yearly, but it’s not guaranteed compensation. l

Workers assemble the front bumper of Toyota's Aqua compact hybrid vehicle on the assembly line of the Kanto Auto Works plant in Kanegasaki, Iwate prefecture, about 500km north of Tokyo AFP

Pakistan � nance minister optimistic after rupee recoveryn AFP, Islamabad

Pakistan’s � nance minister Ishaq Dar on Wednesday said he was optimistic about an economic recovery after the rupee breached the psychologically important 100 to the dollar mark.

The currency had been losing its value against the greenback since Sharif’s PML-N government came to power in June last year, sliding from 97 rupees to the dollar to a low of 108 in December.

Since then it has mounted a recov-ery and as of Wednesday evening the rupee was trading at 97.90 to the dollar.

Addressing a press conference

Wednesday, Dar said: “The price of onions, tomatoes and dollars has been brought down to the level when Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif took oath.”

“It is a positive development for the economy and will boost investors’ con-� dence into Pakistan,” Dar said, adding the government was not resorting to injecting reserves from the state bank in order to stabilise the currency.

“We did not use State Bank money to strengthen the rupee, but persuaded exporters to bring back their money to Pakistan and checked currency specu-lation, which resulted in the rising val-ue of the rupee,” he added. l

Dollar weakens in Asian traden AFP, Tokyo

The dollar softened against the yen in light Tokyo trade Wednesday, following the Bank of Japan’s decision to stand pat on any fresh monetary easing measures.

The greenback stood at 102.87 yen, from 102.94 yen in New York and well down from the 103.30 yen seen in To-kyo Tuesday.

And the euro was at 142.68 yen against 142.73 yen in US trade, also sharply lower than 143.30 yen earlier Tuesday in Asia. The single currency bought $1.3853 against $1.3863.

Bank of Japan governor Haruhiko Kuroda said he saw “no need for now to make adjustments to monetary policy” after a two-day meeting.

“It was kind of expected but it is a con� rmation from him that additional easing is not imminent,” a senior dealer at a major bank in Tokyo said.

However, analysts expect the bank is holding back until it can assess the impact of a sales tax increase that is due to take e� ect next month and which some warn could impact the country’s economic recovery.

Nomura Securities said in a note to clients that they believed the BoJ would “will engage in additional mon-etary easing in July”. l

BB to step up bank vault monitoring B1 COLUMN 6doors with steel wall around the vault space of the banks. The � oors and roofs of around the vaults also have to be certi� ed by an engineer.

As part of technical security mea-sure, there must be an alarming system round the clock along with a closed-circuit television camera at the vaults.

There should be an uninterrupted

connectivity between the bank’s central information system and the vault’s secu-rity system. Automated � re extinguish-ers also must be set up into the vaults.

An amount of around Tk16.4 crore was looted from Kishoreganj Sadar branch of Sonali Bank in Januarywhile more recentlyanother burglary hit a Bogra branch of the state-owned bank looting over Tk30 lakh. l

B4 Back PageDHAKA TRIBUNE Thursday, March 13, 2014

DILBERT

Engineer Christoph Amma demonstrates "Air Writing" with a sensor wristband at the 2014 CeBIT computer technology trade fair in Hanover, central Germany. Developed by the Karlsruhe Institute of Technology, the sensor attached to the wrist records hand movements and a computer system captures the signals and translates them into text. Great Britain is partner country of the fair considered as the world's biggest high-tech fair running from March 10 to 14 AFP

ADB punishes individuals, � rms in $1bn fraud proben AFP, Manila

The Asian Development Bank has im-posed sanctions on 30 people and 31 � rms for “integrity violations”, follow-ing a 2013 fraud investigation into $1bn worth of projects it funded, the lender said.

The ADB said it investigated a re-cord 250 allegations of corruption, col-lusion, coercion and fraud last year, 10 more than in 2012, the bank said in a report published yesterday.

The investigation included six proj-ects operational between 2006 and 2010 in China, Azerbaijan, Pakistan, Nepal and Laos, which were probed for “procurement-related” issues, ADB said in the report.

“Fraud related to work experience, quali� cations, and technical and � nan-cial capacities of consulting � rms or consultants continues to be the most common type of integrity violation re-ported,” the ADB’s O� ce of Anticorrup-tion and Integrity chief Clare Wee said in a statement.

The names and nationalities of the companies and individuals punished, as well as the nature of the sanctions, were not disclosed in the report by the Manila-based ADB. Bank representa-tives declined to comment further when contacted by AFP yesterday.

However, ADB sources, who asked

not to be named, said companies re-ceiving sanctions would be “black-listed” and barred from taking part in ADB projects for between three and 10 years.

Sanctions can be imposed on indi-viduals “inde� nitely” depending on the circumstances, the sources added.

The allegations investigated included an agricultural project in the Ningxia autonomous region in China that was funded by a $100m loan and a $4.545m grant and an Azerbaijan road project backed by an $500m ADB loan, it said.

Investigators also looked into a Paki-stan power transmission project sup-ported by $358.747m in ADB loans, as well as three smaller projects in Nepal and Laos that obtained $92m in ADB loans and grants.

The ADB sources said that in extreme cases, the lender also operates under a “cross debarment” system in which it and other multilateral institutions will all enforce each other’s blacklists.

The report said 525 entities have been subjected to this type of sanc-tion by the ADB, the World Bank, the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development and the Inter-American Development Bank since 2010.

The ADB lent $9.4bn in 2012, according to the latest data released by the bank. l

World Cup brings trouble to Brazil’s economy n Reuters, Brasilia

With the World Cup in June and July and a presidential election in October, many Brazilians aren’t thinking beyond 2014. But next year is likely to be mem-orable for all the wrong reasons in Latin America’s biggest economy.

President Dilma Rousse� , or whoev-er wins the election, will have to make deep budget cuts, raise taxes and take other painful steps to address Brazil’s growing � nancial imbalances.

The fallout will likely be more dam-aging than many investors anticipate, resulting in a fourth straight year of disappointing growth - a big fall back to earth for a country that last decade was one of the world’s most dynamic emerging markets.

Economists currently expect Brazil’s gross domestic product to grow 1.68% this year, and 2% in 2015, according to a weekly survey by the central bank. Yet the latter forecast is somewhat mis-leading, because many economists ad-mit their estimates are based on com-puter models that don’t fully account for what politicians will do after the election.

“No matter who wins (the election), it’s going to be a di� cult year, worse than many believe,” said Fernando Henrique Cardoso, who was president from 1995 to 2003 and still retains con-siderable in� uence in � nancial circles

as a leader of the main opposition party.An o� cial close to Rousse� , speak-

ing on condition of anonymity, broadly concurred: “Few people are talking about 2015 right now. But it will be hard, no doubt.”

The biggest and most disruptive task will be trimming Brazil’s � scal de� cit, which investors and ratings agencies say has been too high in recent years.

No one expects Rousse� , a pragmat-ic leftist, to make painful budget cuts while campaigning for re-election. As a result, the cuts will need to be even deeper when the next presidential term begins on Jan. 1, 2015 - especially if Brazil’s sovereign credit is downgrad-ed in the interim by Standard & Poor’s to its lowest investment-grade rating, as many in Brasilia now anticipate.

Tax hikes are also likely. So are ad-justments to bus fares, gasoline costs and other prices administered by the government, which Rousse� has held in check to prevent in� ation, running around 6%, from rising even higher.

If done properly, belt-tightening policies could restore balance to the economy and rebuild Brazil’s tattered credibility with the private sector. That, in turn, could set the stage for an eventual return to the good old days last decade when GDP often grew bet-ter than 4% a year.

Yet, even in a best-case scenario, the measures will smother domestic de-

mand in the short term - perhaps not quite enough to cause a recession, of-� cials and economists say, but enough to result in another lost year in terms of GDP growth.

“2015 is going to be the big year of adjustment,” said Marcelo Salomon, chief Brazil economist for Barclays in New York. “What needs to happen is a credibility shock so that the govern-ment shows it isn’t just thinking in the short term.”

Country stuck in trafficThe seeds of Brazil’s current predica-ment were sown during the good years.

Thanks to strong demand for its soy and iron ore from China, plus smart � scal management and social welfare policies under Rousse� ’s predecessors, Brazil has managed to pull some 35 million people out of poverty since the mid-1990s. It also became a top market for foreign automakers, retailers and telecom companies.

But economists say that, generally speaking, Brazil sold too many cars during the boom while not building enough roads.

That is, it channeled too much of the windfall toward consumption and not enough on investment. The result is an economy now plagued by infrastructure bottlenecks and low productivity - and, thus, high in� ation and slow growth.

Rousse� , who took o� ce in 2011

just as the economy was slowing, re-acted by making a series of targeted tax cuts worth approximately 1.5% of GDP, while also keeping � scal spending ro-bust to stimulate the economy.

Her actions may have prevented a sharper slump. The economy grew 2.3% in 2013, and de� ed predictions of a minor recession during the second half of the year.

But priming the � scal pump has carried a cost: The budget de� cit is ex-pected to hit nearly 4% of GDP in 2014, a percentage point above the past de-cade’s average.

That’s not a huge budget gap by global standards. But investors hold Brazil to a tighter standard than most countries because of its history of run-away spending that resulted in hyper-in� ation in the 1980s and early 1990s.

At the slightest sign of � scal slippage or an uptick in in� ation, it’s not just rat-ings agencies that get worried. Anyone over age 40 or so remembers watching their salary get decimated.

“There’s been a very large worsen-ing in expectations” among business-es and consumers alike, said Aloisio Campelo, who runs economic surveys for the Getulio Vargas Foundation, a Brazilian business school.

“The incoming government will have to hold the line on � scal austerity to bring credibility back,” Campelo said. l

Oil prices ease in Asian traden AFP, Singapore

Oil prices fell in Asian trade yesterday ahead of the weekly US stockpiles re-port that will give an indication of de-mand in the world’s biggest economy.

New York’s main contract, West Tex-as Intermediate (WTI) for April deliv-ery, dipped 61 cents to $99.42 in after-noon trade, and Brent North Sea crude for April eased 27 cents to $108.28.

The US Department of Energy will release its report later in the day and analysts expected inventories to have risen two million barrels in the week ending March 7 as the severe winter weather draws to an end, leading to weaker demand for heating oil.

Kelly Teoh, managing director at IR Resources, said that with the Ukrainian crisis and the cold winter weather in the US easing, investors would focus on

economic data from the United States and China.

“In the short term, a lot of it has to do with (uncertainty over) the US economy ... and China showing a slow-down,” Teoh told AFP.

Beijing said Saturday it had seen an unexpected trade de� cit of $22.98bn in February as exports dived, fuelling fears about growth in the Asian eco-nomic gia nt.

Investors are also keeping an eye on political developments in oil-producer Libya after the country’s parliament ousted Prime Minister Ali Zeidan.

The vote of no-con� dence in parlia-ment came after a North Korean tanker laden with oil from a rebel-held termi-nal in eastern Libya broke through a na-val blockade and escaped to sea despite the government’s threats to block it by force if necessary. l

WeChat revolution: China’s ‘killer app’ speaks to the massesn AFP, Shanghai

When condom maker Durex wants to send an intimate message to customers in China, it uses a homegrown instant messaging platform called WeChat which has taken the country by storm in just three years.

WeChat - known as “weixin”, or micro-message in Chinese - has simi-larities to WhatsApp, the Silicon Val-ley start-up that Facebook bought for $19bn last month.

Now the CEO of its parent company hopes the service can go global, brand-ing it China’s “most hopeful product for internationalisation” - but concerns about cybersecurity could hamper its ambitions.

WeChat is more versatile than What-sApp, allowing its more than 300 mil-lion users to send text, photos, videos and voice messages over smartphones, � nd each other by shaking their devic-es - a common dating technique - and even book and pay for taxis.

Its popularity has gone beyond in-dividuals, with corporations and even the government using the application developed by Chinese Internet giant Tencent for their internal and public communications.

Since the WhatsApp deal was an-nounced, Hong Kong-listed Tencent’s shares have risen 9.4 percent, giving it a market capitalisation of $150bn, approaching Facebook’s monumental $180bn.

“WeChat is an extremely people-friendly platform, something consum-ers frequently use every day,” said Fay Zhao, senior brand manager for Durex, which has asked its 200,000 followers to transmit “love stories” over WeChat in its latest campaign.

Analysts say WeChat has eroded the popularity of another form of Chinese social media - microblogs or “weibo”, the equivalent of Twitter - which have been hurt by a government crackdown on content and users.

WeChat is now the country’s second most popular instant messaging tool on mobile devices, according to consul-tancy Analysys International - behind the venerable QQ platform, launched in 1999 and also owned by Tencent - and is unlikely to be dislodged.

“WeChat, as a ‘killer app’ of Tencent on mobile Internet, has experienced a rapid increase in its user base since it commercialised in 2013,” consultancy Analysys International said in a re-search report in February, referring to when it started charging for some ser-vices.

“Killer app” is technological termi-nology for a unique and wildly popular product.

WeChat is free to use, but charges for products such as emoticons and special features in games.

To retain users, WeChat has intro-duced new services alongside basic communication, including gaming, online payments and the taxi booking

service.Tencent acquired a 20% stake in

Chinese restaurant listing platform Dianping.com in February and started o� ering dining coupons through WeChat.

Its latest deal, announced this week, sees Tencent take a 15% stake in Chinese online direct sales company JD.com, in a bid to better compete with e-commerce giant Alibaba.

Overseas expansion plansFounded in 1998 in the southern

boom town of Shenzhen, Tencent is one of China’s largest Internet compa-nies and rivals Alibaba and domestic search engine Baidu.

Now the � rm’s founder and CEO Pony Ma is putting high hopes on ex-panding WeChat abroad, budgeting $200m for overseas marketing last year and hiring football superstar Lionel Messi for advertisements.

State media quoted Ma as calling the service “China’s most hopeful product in terms of internationalisation”.

But global concerns about cyberse-curity could put a damper on its ambi-tions, analysts say.

Before former US National Security Agency contractor Edward Snowden’s revelations of widespread electronic surveillance by the organisation, Wash-ington and Beijing traded accusations of cyberspying for months.

US lawmakers have expressed wor-ries over the security of telecommu-nications equipment sold by Chinese � rms such as Huawei and ZTE, which

the companies have denied.China’s Communist rulers maintain

a huge surveillance network of their own in the country, including online, where the so-called Great Firewall of China blocks access to sites deemed sensitive, and a vast censorship ma-chine deletes objectionable weibo posts and other content.

Meanwhile, Chinese Internet � rms and foreign � rms operating in China have in the past provided user infor-mation to authorities in cases ruled to involve state security.

Some Western users might have concerns over Internet security and the protection of personal data with We-Chat, analysts said.

“American and European countries always have concerns over the safety and personal privacy issues of Chinese products,” said iResearch analyst Lu Jingyu. “This might be an obstacle for its overseas development.”

Other global players include Japan’s Line, with more than 300 million registered users, and South Korea’s Kakao Talk with over 100 million, which together dominate other Asian markets.

“There are already some well-estab-lished instant messaging products in the global market... forming a natural barrier for the internationalisation of WeChat,” said Dong Xu, an analyst for Analysys International.

On Tuesday, Tencent’s shares closed up 0.16% at HK$617.50 ($80.19). l