Privatisation Commission won’t offload Rupali stake

Privatisation Commission won’t
offload Rupali stake
Staff Correspondent

The advisory council committee on economic affairs in a meeting on Tuesday rejected the finance ministry’s proposal to assign the Privatisation Commission again to offload government’s shares in the Rupali Bank Ltd.
‘We have decided not to task the Privatisation Commission again with offloading government’s shares in Rupali Bank as the bank is already listed with the country’s both bourses,’ finance and planning adviser AB Mirza Azizul Islam told reporters after the meeting.
He said the bank’s present status quo should be maintained for improvement of its financial condition.
‘As the highest bidder to buy the government shares in the bank a Saudi buyer failed to pay by several deadlines, the caretaker government forfeited its 100,000 dollar guarantee deposit,’ Aziz added.
In 2006, the Privatisation Commission selected a Saudi Arabian buyer through an international bid floated for the sale of government’s stake in Rupali Bank. The Saudi buyer offered $450 million to take over the entire 93.26 per cent government stake. A memorandum of understanding was also signed to this effect. But the commission had to scrap the deal following persisting foot-dragging by the Saudi buyer.
Mirza Aziz said a Japanese organisation named ‘Ex-IP’ had offered to buy the government shares in the bank.
The financial health of the bank has been poor for decades. The bank is now facing an acute manpower shortage because of voluntary retirement of a good number of officials and employees under the World Bank-financed Enterprise Growth and Bank Modernisation Project.

Fuel price drops again

Fuel price drops again

The fuel price should have been slashed to the level as it was two years back as the international crude oil price is less than it was two years back. The government is putting undue hardship on the poor people.
F Islam
Dhaka

* * *

The distance by sea from a given oil-exporting Middle Eastern port to the nearest port in the USA is double (if not more) when compared with that of Chittagong.
In October/November, in New York (USA, mostly dependent on Middle Eastern supplies), the fuel price from dispensing outlet came down to as low as almost $2 per gallon (4.54 Ltr) when Middle East crude oil came down to $50 a barrel.
Around that time, our administration had reduced the price, for example, of octane from Tk.90 to Tk.80 per Ltr equivalent to approx US$1.14 per Ltr which, in other words, means US$5.17 per gallon!
Crude oil price in the international market has been on $43 a barrel bracket for sometime which has now further come down to $34 a barrel. Under the present circumstances, the reduction of the price by only Tk.2/3 per Ltr has totally bamboozled me! Could it be that the present administration wishes to keep on thriving on windfall gain at the cost of the general public?
Maybe, I have gone horribly wrong in my calculation! If so, can a kind hearted reader educate me, please?
Ashfaque Chowdhry
Via e-mail

Accountability required from warmongers

Accountability required
from warmongers

Mahatma Gandhi was an apostle of non-violence and peace. Hardly anyone has insulted Mahatma Gandhi more than Mahmood Elahi (December 13, 2008), a Canadian national contributing frequently to this column.
His warmongering character was revealed during 2002-2003 when he became a strong advocate for George Bush’s illegal invasion of Iraq. In those days, Mahmood Elahi wrote incessantly in numerous papers around the world in order to build up global public opinion in favour of George Bush.
Often he wrote the same article simultaneously in several newspapers. His guru those days was Ahmed Chalabi, a wanted criminal in Jordan, where Chalabi was sentenced in absentia to 22 years of hard labour for embezzling $70 million from his family’s Petra Bank.
When the Saddam regime was overthrown, Mahmood Elahi’s joy knew no bounds. On May 27, 2003 he described George Bush as ‘a man of vision’ in a leading Bangladeshi newspaper. (http: //www.thedailystar.net /2003/05/27/ d30527110659.htm)
The type of democracy that George Bush introduced in Iraq came out of the barrels of gun resulting in the deaths of thousands and thousands of innocent Iraqis. The country is ruined and has been pushed back half a century.
More than four million Iraqis have become refugees. Innumerable Iraqi girls and women became the object of sexual lust of the invading soldiers acting as the vanguard of Bush’s ‘democracy’. The puppet regime of Iraq emerging through Bush’s ‘democracy’ was powerless to touch these rapists who in many cases acted with impunity.
Millions and millions of people marched around the world against the invasion of Iraq. World leaders such as Pope John Paul II, Nelson Mandela, Jimmy Carter and Edward Kennedy spoke against the war. Mahmood Elahi’s effort to mobilise public opinion in favour of Bush’s Iraq invasion met with severe criticisms.
Many compared his writings to those of Joseph Goebbels, the propaganda minister of Adolf Hitler. But as time passed by and the heroic people of Iraq fought back, Mahmood Elahi realised that George Bush’s criminal attack on Iraq did not become a cakewalk. He changed tactics and now even talks of Mahatma Gandhi.
The other day the brave Iraqi journalist Muntazer al-Zeidi threw two shoes at George Bush, one of them as ‘a goodbye kiss from the Iraqi people’ to a ‘dog’ and the other ‘for the widows and orphans and all those killed in Iraq.’
He acted not just for the people of Iraq but for the entire humanity demanding peace and justice. Time has come to demand accountability from all those warmongers including Mahmood Elahi who willingly joined the bandwagon of George Bush in the illegal invasion of Iraq that resulted in one of the great tragedies of all times.
Ahmed Sadiq
Via e-mail

Integrated solution for water and sanitation

Integrated solution for
water and sanitation

This refers to a UNB report on experts’ views regarding the solution of city water and sanitation problems in an integrated manner. The basic idea is to recycle the sanitation waste into potable water as practised in Singapore which has a totalitarian type of administration with strict control on everything. Further, Singapore has the reputation of having one of the highest quality standards in the world based on strict and uncompromising technical discipline.
This is something totally foreign to our culture where quality control is just to stay on the right side of the specification one way or the other. Bending rules and shortcuts is the order of the day of Bangladeshi style of technical discipline. Given these facts of life integrating water supply and sanitation, which is recycling sanitation liquids into potable water, may well lead to catastrophic health hazard in Bangladesh. I believe it will be far safer and saner for us to keep the two separate for our overall health safety.
The pragmatic and realistic approach could be to go for large-scale biogas plant managed in industrial scale from the sanitation fluids and sewage. The final biogas digester solids may be mixed with suitable dried and shredded solid refuse and wastes, mixed with oil refinery sludge to make fuel cakes. This could be a realistic option given our shortage of local fuel resources.
In my opinion, integration of water supply with recycled sanitation waste is a dangerous health proposition for the country in real terms although it is theoretically viable and justified. WASA’s water supply system that we have is bacteriologically and physically (suspended and dissolved impurities) as poor as it can be. The first and important objective is to ensure that WASA water is really safe to drink straight off the tap unless you have developed built-in immunity to intestinal bacterial infection.
SA Mansoor
Dhaka

Traffic congestion

Traffic congestion
Aminul Islam Sojun, Journalist, Dhaka
A news item in some newspapers stated, “Bangladesh Railway has agreed to suspend rail operations between Tejgaon and Kamalapur stations during the peak travel hours to reduce tailback in the capital. The move follows a recent request from the Dhaka Metropolitan Police to the railway authorities for assistance in mitigating huge tailbacks that become a common feature in the capital city. According to DMP, many of the city's roads are too frequently blocked for trains arriving at or leaving Kamalapur Railway Station.”

Life of the disabled

Life of the disabled
Farida Begum Dhaka
I have long been contemplating to write on the disabled. Disability related writing is normally done by persons who are not disabled. Long ago I read an article by Sylvia Mortoza in which she narrated the miserable plight of her being paralysed. As she was a victim, her description was very authentic. It was a tragic part of life for an outstanding columnist and a prolific writer like Mrs. Mortoza when she was unable to put her signature on a piece of paper. An active women as she was, it was her traumatic experience when she could not longer be caring for her own or others' emotional and physical needs. The thought of being helpless and dependent on others was simply horrifying but this was what happened to her.

Congo rebel chief says ‘war’ if no talks with govt

Congo rebel chief says ‘war’
if no talks with govt
Reuters/Bdnews24.Jomba,Congo


Congolese Tutsi rebel leader General Laurent Nkunda threatened war Saturday unless Congo’s government entered a new round of talks with him.
Nkunda, whose forces have routed government troops and gained swathes of territory in North Kivu province in the east of Democratic Republic of Congo since launching a new offensive in August, has repeatedly demanded negotiations.
Nkunda said he had been told by the UN special envoy, former Nigerian president Olusegun Obasanjo, that Kinshasa had accepted the principle of talks.
‘If there is no negotiation, let us say then there is war,’ Nkunda told reporters after meeting Obasanjo in the rebel commander’s native village, Jomba.
‘I know that (the government) has no capacity to fight, so they have only one choice: negotiations,’ he said.
‘We asked for a response as to where, when, and with whom we are going to do these talks. For us, we propose Nairobi and for the mediator we proposed chief Obasanjo.’
Video footage of the meeting provided by the UN peacekeeping mission in Congo, MONUC, showed Obasanjo criticising Nkunda for recent hostilities, including Thursday’s capture of the town of Ishasha, on the border with Uganda.
‘What has happened in the last 14 days has not made me happy,’ Obasanjo said, rising to his feet to address Nkunda, who remained seated at a low table.
‘I tried to build a relationship of trust, but I don’t receive the same from you.’
Obasanjo said Nkunda should have informed him he was planning fresh offensives.
‘You are making me a laughing stock,’ he said.
Nkunda, who wore a white robe with matching shoes and scarf, wrung his hands said the ceasefire he had declared applied only to fighting against the Congolese army, not against what he described as ‘foreign negative forces.’
That ceasefire has brought nearly two weeks of relative calm. But his men have continued attacking Congolese and Rwandan militia allies of the government.
Obasanjo was in Congo on his second mission in two weeks to try to end fighting in North Kivu that has displaced some 250,000 civilians and at one point brought Nkunda’s troops to within 10 km of the provincial capital, Goma.
The envoy, who met president Joseph Kabila in the mineral-rich African country Friday, has pressed for talks.
Government ministers this week rebuffed the possibility of direct negotiations with Nkunda, calling for him to return to a earlier peace pact signed in January.
Emerging from his one-hour meeting with the rebel leader, Obasanjo avoided questions.
‘We have advanced the course of peace,’ he said.
MONUC said clashes between Nkunda’s National Congress for the Defence of the People and armed groups erupted for a second day near Masisi town Saturday.
The roots of the North Kivu conflict stem from Rwanda’s 1994 genocide, when extremist Hutu militias killed some 800,000 Tutsis and moderate Hutus before fleeing into Congo.
That led to two wars and a humanitarian crisis that killed more than 5 million people, mostly from hunger and disease.
Nkunda accuses Kabila of arming Rwandan Hutu rebels, including some perpetrators of the 1994 genocide, to fight alongside the weak and chaotic Congolese army.
Around 1 million civilians have been displaced by clashes between the CNDP, the army, local Mai Mai militias, and Rwandan rebels since Nkunda relaunched his insurgency in late 2006.