THE chief adviser to the interim government Muhammad Yunus, who stands his ground for holding the national elections by June 2026, has in Tokyo said that not all political parties want the elections by December and only one party so does. The remark that he has made at the Nikkei Forum 2025 has not named any party, but he has obviously alluded to the...
THE arrest of a retired professor of Jagannath University in a dubious case related to the violence during the July uprising in 2024 raises serious concern as such arrest and cases stand to harm justice and allow perpetrators to escape unpunished...
LIGHT engineering, which could fetch up to $100 billion from export if properly nourished, warrants that the government should provide the sector with policy support, scopes for investment and the needed infrastructural development. It is in this...
ACADEMIC activities in primary and secondary schools are disrupted amidst work abstention by teachers and employees. Assistant teachers of government primary schools and employees of secondary schools, on monthly pay order scheme...
THE interim government and several political parties, especially the Bangladesh Nationalist Party, appear to have embarked on a confrontational path about the timing of the next general elections. While the Bangladesh Nationalist Party and some other...
BANGLADESH has registered a surge in suspicious financial transactions and activities during the tenure of the interim government, installed after the fall of the Awami League regime on August 5, 2024, which suggests that it has not done enough to contain money laundering. The most recent annual report of the Bangladesh Financial Intelligence Unit says that suspicious...
MACROECONOMIC performance, despite some improvements in the past nine months of the interim government, has still remained a cause for concern. A lack of political stability and the absence of necessary institutional reforms are believed to be hindering largely sustained macroeconomic progress. The Centre for Policy Dialogue in its third interim review of the...
THE problem of gas supply to industries has raised alarm about the continued shortfall in production, warning of shutdown and unpaid wages in export-oriented factories. Four trade bodies in the apparel and ceramic sectors have said that operation in many factories has halved and that the situation could worsen after Eid. For more than a couple of years, power plants...
A HIGH allocation for women in the budget and the stringent oversight of the allocation can ensure a proper use of the budget funds meant for spending on women to attend to gender inequality. In the light of such a proposition, participants in a pre-budget dialogue, 鈥楢dvancing gender-responsive budgeting FFD4 Outcome鈥� that the Citizen鈥檚 Platform for SDGs...
INDIA has unilaterally pushed several hundred people into Bangladesh through several border areas, which is unacceptable because it goes against accepted border management guidelines and diplomatic standards. India has continued pushing people into Bangladesh since May 7, when a war-like situation prevailed between India and Pakistan. Of the fresh push-in incidents...
THE ongoing spate of protests by officials and employees, along with the resulting disruption in services and administrative activities across various government offices, is a cause for concern. These protests highlight fundamental issues with the government鈥檚 approach to implementing reforms and amending existing laws. On May 25, government officials and political...
THE Industrial Police has identified 198 apparel factories to be risky where the payment of wages and the festival allowance may remain uncertain before Eid-ul-Azha, likely to be celebrated in the first week of June. The police say that the number of factories, in the preliminary list so far, that might not pay wages and the allowance in time could finally vary. The apparel...
The meetings of the chief adviser to the interim government with political parties on May 24, presumably aimed at resolving the ongoing political and other crises that had led the increasingly frustrated chief adviser to consider resignation, appear not to have decisively eased the stalemate. Conflicting demands from various political parties, especially the...
A FAIR, Gazi Kalu-Champabati Mela, having been held for about two hundred years, at Jagannathpur of Kumarkhali in Kushtia has remained suspended since May 20 after it began on May 17. A clash between the Bangladesh Jamaat-e-Islami, which wanted a permanent end to the holding of the fair, and the Bangladesh Nationalist Party, which wanted the fair to continue, has...
NEARLY six months have passed since the Bangladesh Tree Protection Movement began a sit-in inside the partially destroyed Panthakunja Park, one of the capital鈥檚 last parks, calling for a halt to the construction of a section of the Dhaka elevated expressway from the Film Development Corporation to the Plassey crossing. Protesters say that the construction of the elevated...