Labour and Employment Affairs Adviser Brig Gen (retd) Dr Sakhawat Hussain has said that it is not feasible to reopen the closed factory of Beximco Industrial Park.
"For some time, the environment was peaceful. Suddenly, yesterday, they (workers) organised an assembly and presented three demands. I believe it is impossible for any government to fulfil these demands as they are highly unreasonable,” he said.
“Despite this, they announced they would form a human chain and block roads. They followed through, and we did not intervene. Police were deployed, but they were not obstructed,” said Sakhawat, who is also the convener of the Advisory Council Committee for reviewing the labour and business situation of industrial institutions in Beximco Industrial Park, on Thursday.
The labour affairs adviser was speaking during a press conference on Thursday at the Secretariat.
Private power producers have urged the government to clear their outstanding bills against sales of electricity to the state-owned Bangladesh Power Development Board.
“Currently, the Independent Power Producers total dues to be paid by the BPDB is around Tk 1,600 crore,” said David Hasanat, president of the Bangladesh Independent Power Producers Association (BIPPA) while addressing a press conference at Sonargaon Hotel in the city on Thursday.
Accompanied by his predecessor Imran Karim, vice chairman of Confidence Group, he said they have been unable to continue operation of their power plants because of the payment backlog.
A Biman Bangladesh flight originating from Rome landed safely at Hazrat Shahjalal International Airport (HSIA) with a bomb threat this morning while all 250 passengers and 13 crew members onboard were evacuated with safety.
"We received a bomb threat from an unknown number for Biman Rome-Dhaka flight. The flight landed safely at 09:20am with 250 passengers and 13 crews. All passengers were safely disembarked from the aircraft and they went to terminal," HSIA Executive Director Group Captain Kamrul Islam said in a brief note.
He said currently the HSIA authority is following protocol to detect, if any threat is available.
The executive director said he will inform media the situation in detail later on.
The regulatory committee will finalise their strategy to reform the country telecommunications network topology and the licensing regime by the end of March and submit to the government, Major General (retd) Md Emdad ul Bari, chairman of the Bangladesh Telecommunication Regulatory Commission (BTRC) said at a press briefing today (21 January).
"The network topology became too complex and fragmented because of too many layers that raised costs. We want a simple and cost effective topology," he said after a meeting of the "Reform of network topology and licensing regime of Bangladesh telecom sector" committee headed by the BTRC commissioner for engineering and operations.
Also, excessive licenses in many layers issued during the previous government is hurting healthy competition in the sector, he said, adding that some firms having licenses in multiple layers are using cross subsidy techniques to win competition.