Friday, March 29, 2024

Six hours of abuse

School kids kept standing under the sun as state minister shows up for 5 mins
Some 130 children of Vatapara Non-government Primary School at Durgapur union of Aditmari upazila were kept standing in the scorching sun on Sunday for as long as six hours to welcome the state minister for primary and mass education.
The practice of making students wait on roads to welcome dignitaries continued though the government in December 2009 firmly instructed all educational institutions to stop this.
On Sunday, the authorities around 10:00am lined up the kids in front of the school and they were there until around 4:00pm when State Minister Motahar Hossain finally showed up and spent less than five minutes at the entrance.
Guardians, meanwhile, got angry and some of them even took their children home.
Nur Haque, a guardian, said the teachers and school managing committee told them that kids would have to wait for only half an hour, but they stood for more than five hours.
Some guardians complained that their children could not have lunch or take bath in time and some of them even fell sick because of the hot weather.
Khairun Akhter, a student of class-V, said the teachers and managing committee president asked them to stand on the road to welcome the minister.
Kazi Mohammad Solayman Alam, managing committee president, said the school got academic permission in 2001, two years after its establishment. Since then, seven people have been volunteering as teachers in the school.
“For the nationalisation of the school, we invited the state minister. The minister was late due to other programmes at Durgapur union,” he added.
The school headmaster, Sirajul Islam, said local AL leaders confirmed that the minister would come to visit the school by 12:00noon.
“We had to wait, as the minister was late,” he added.
Aminul Islam, secretary of Durgapur union parishad Awami League unit, said “We did not ask the kids to wait on the road.”
It was not a scheduled programme. “We told them [school authorities] that the minister would visit the school on his way to the district town after attending functions at Durgapur,” he added.
The headmaster said the state minister did not make any promise regarding the nationalisation issue. “The minister did not even enter the school and talked for less than five minutes on the road.”

 

Courtesy of The Daily Star

Related News

Frequent cyclones hit agriculture hard in coastal Bangladesh

DAE estimates Tk 387cr worth crops loss in Midhili Emran Hossain With another cyclonic storm brewing in the Bay of Bengal, the third one in a little over a month, farmers on Bangladesh’s coast are busy harvesting their partially ripened crops, potentially losing their expected production significantly. The Department of Agricultural Extension completed its assessment ... Read more

Week-long tree fair ends

News Desk : dhakamirror.com A week-long tree fair and plantation drive, held on Moulvibazar Government High School grounds, concludes today. The fair, organised by Moulvibazar district administration and the Department of Wildlife Management and Nature Conservation, began on July 27. Students, among other visitors, got the chance to explore an array of varieties, both local ... Read more

Trees on 50 acres lost in 5yrs

Sohrab Hossain The Shuvo Sandhya Beach in Barguna’s Taltali upazila has been facing serious erosion by the Bay for the last couple of years. Due to continuous erosion by the Bay, nearly 50 acres of forestland close to the beach and about 60,000 trees have already been washed away in the last five year. Meanwhile, ... Read more

Kuakata Beach: 75,000 trees lost to erosion every year

Md Abbas There was a time when coconut, palm, tamarisk, and mangrove trees swayed with the winds on Kuakata Beach. Their tall trunks guarded the shore-dwellers against the wrath of natural calamities. However, the current state of the National Park, a government-declared forest reserve along this coastal belt since 2005, only brings dismay to tourists ... Read more

Bogura yoghurt, Chapainawabganj Langra and Ashwina receive the GI label

News Desk : dhakamirror.com Four more products, including the yogurt of Bogura, and Langra and Ashwina varieties of mango of Chapainawabganj have been recognised as geographical indication (GI) products from Bangladesh. In addition, the Aman variety of the fragrant Tulshimala rice from Sherpur has also acquired the GI tag, Md Zillur Rahman, deputy registrar (Trade ... Read more

BINA Dhan-25 shows hope

Farmers get higher yield from newly developed rice variety Sajjad Hossain Mannan Joaddar cultivated BINA Dhan-25, a newly developed variety of paddy, on one bigha of land in Moghi village of Magura 93 days ago. The 55-year-old farmer is now over the moon. He had not seen such thin and long grain in his 20 ... Read more

Banana cultivation shows bright prospect

Shykh Seraj Agriculture in Tangail region has changed a lot in the last three decades. Once the land of this region was unfit for any cultivation. Back then, it wasn’t possible to grow crops due to uneven land surface and lack of irrigation facilities. In the early 80s, the topography of Tangail’s Sakhipur, Ghatail, Basail ... Read more

Maize farming leading char farmers to financial stability

Mostafa Shabuj About two decades ago, farmers in remote char areas of northern Bangladesh were quite impoverished due to the consequences of repeated flooding and other natural disasters. Now though, these farmers have achieved financial stability by growing maize, which is more suitable for the region compared to other crops. For example, more profitable crops ... Read more

Farmers find hope in solar-powered irrigation

EAM Asaduzzaman Life is easier now for Abu Taleb, 45, a potato farmer of Saddyo Puskuruni village in Rangpur. A year ago, high irrigation costs for diesel-run pumps, which he bore out-of-pocket, made it difficult for him to provide for his three children. Now, after switching to solar-powered irrigation, his livelihood has changed for the ... Read more

Shoilmari: A river dead, livelihoods endangered

Dipankar Roy The once mighty Shoilmari river in Khulna’s Batiaghata upazila can now only be called a river on paper. In just three years, it has been filled with silt. The once 150-metre-wide river has now turned into a 3 to 4-metre narrow channel. Boats cannot sail there in low tide and people can cross ... Read more

Countrywide heavy rains until 13 Sep

News Desk : dhakamirror.com The current heavy rains brought on by the depression at the Bay of Bengal are predicted to last until Tuesday, according to the weather forecast service. The low will weaken in next 24 hours and move towards the plain land through Odisha and towards Chhatishgarh through West Bengal afterwards. Mostafa Kamal ... Read more

120 hills disappeared from Chattogram in 4 decades

An environmental group called Bangladesh Environment Forum alleged Sunday that 120 hills had vanished from Chattogram city in the past forty years. The port city’s hills decreased from 32.37 square kilometers in 1976 to 14.02 square kilometers in 2008, according to a written statement from the forum’s general secretary, Aliur Rahman. He was addressing during ... Read more

A young agro enthusiast helping farmers in Tangail

Mirza Shakil When the pandemic hit and in-person classes at universities were suspended, Shakil Ahmed, then a final-year student of agriculture department at Noakhali Science and Technology University, had returned home. But he refused to sit idle, and so, asked his father for a plot of land to farm squash. The yield was massive as ... Read more

Brood fish release sample eggs in Halda

Brood fish in the Halda have released sample eggs – indicating full spawning – since Saturday night at various points of the river. Egg collectors got 200-500 grammes of eggs on average since Saturday night from the river. Ashu Barua from Madunaghat area, a seasoned egg collector, told The Daily Star that they started coming ... Read more

Ban on catching hilsa to end at midnight after 2 months

The ban on catching hilsa will be lifted at midnight today after two months. The fisheries department said due to the two-month ban, it will be possible to collect the desired target of 6 lakh tonnes of hilsa fish this time, reports our Barishal correspondent. However, many fishermen said they are not interested in going to ... Read more

Second chance at education for Pirojpur elderly

“I never knew there’s so much beauty and fun hidden inside a book,” said 44-year-old Salma Begum, who learned to read and write very recently. “I had to blindly trust anyone who could read to let me know the contents of important documents. Now I’m self-sufficient in that regard, and use my own signature instead of ... Read more

Barind farmers at mercy of DTW operators

Ethnic minorities suffer more Suzon Ali . Rajshahi Farmers in the Barind region are held hostage by Barind Multipurpose Development Authority deep tube well operators. Some farmers in the region said that deep tube well operators did not irrigate their land properly while others said that operators extracted extra money and ‘undue benefits’ from them. Talking ... Read more

Local seeds for local needs

Female farmers of Khulna exchange varieties at fair Dipankar Roy Seeds of local varieties – preserved by families for generations – have been the most adaptive way of cultivation for the distinct climatic conditions of the country’s coastal areas. In what is considered a yearly tradition, female farmers exchange the seeds at the “seed fair”, ... Read more

Ingenious indigenous innovation

Kabuljan Begum’s eco-friendly oven makes waves across Rajshahi Anwar Ali Fourteen years ago, Kabuljan Begum developed an environment-friendly oven to keep herself and her family safe from air pollution caused by open-fire ovens. Her solution has now become the go-to choice for hundreds of others in the rural areas of Rajshahi region, covering three districts ... Read more

Tow month long hilsha fishing ban imposes from today

In a bid to conserve Jatka or juveniles of hilsa, the government has imposed a two-month ban on netting, selling and transporting hilsa in six sanctuaries from today (March 1). Bimal Chandra Das, fisheries officer of Barishal, said the ban is going to be observed across 432km area of six districts, including three in Barishal division. ... Read more