Indecisive govt. losing peoples' support
Sadeq Khan
Public disaffection for Dr. Fakhruddin Ahmed's caretaker administration is growing fast and running deep. Members of that administration in bulk appear to be unwilling horses, resentful of those in the driving seats. To common citizens, they appear to be habitually distant, wilfully inhibited and woefully indecisive. With the best of measures, like in fertiliser procurement and distribution, something has been going wrong somewhere or other, and generating fume of discontent.
With bungled measures, like in the case of the government's rice-reserve procurement from abroad, the record is pathetic. The relevant ministry turned a deaf year to early warning from some food policy experts last July to begin procuring food grains when global market prices were still low and big deficits were projected. The caretaker advisers have now decided to make a panic purchase of 4 lakh tons from Indian state-trading companies at the approach of the boro harvest. The government has done so as captive buyer at an unaffordable price of $430 ton, stipulating supply within 60 days of contract. The Indian supply will coincide with the height of boro harvest.
Some have labelled that purchase decision unwise. The fear is that import-price parity will push up the home market price in spite of more than adequate supply for the season from the new harvest compared to home demands. Civil society stalwarts, including the well-known faces of the Economic Association, have supported that purchase decision speculating uncertainty of domestic procurement prospects from the coming boro harvest and taking into account continuing trend of high cereal prices in the world market. Some also smell a rat.
Indeed the enormous goodwill and popular applause with which Dr. Fakhruddin Ahmed's caretaker regime embarked on its journey, along the roadmap of its own making, has been all but exhausted. Uncontrollable hike of commodity prices on account of oil price shocks in the global market was certainly the main contributing factor for popular disenchantment with the regime. But so were the micro-economic dislocations suffered by the public on account of indiscriminate, in stead of exemplary, use of the coercive power of the state by the regime in the name of law-enforcement.
Further cause for aggravation and exasperation has arisen from what is widely perceived as diversionary drills by some in the driving seats of the caretaker administration. Their veiled but persistent encouragement for invocation of bitter memories of the past only remind people of the horrible days of political violence that led to the state of emergency, and make people apprehensive of a relapse of civic disorder. The caretaker advisers, by letting themselves be carried away by lofty slogans of NGO activists or dead issues of lime-light seekers, simply appear to the public to be both insensitive to current needs of the people and obtuse about the priorities of the nation.
What is more disturbing is the fact that common people are beginning to lose faith in the administration's sustained capacity to ensure safety of life and property of citizens. Criminal gangs are again out on the prowl. Curse of unemployment in cities and villages alike are engendering law-breakers of all sorts. A creepy feeling of insecurity and hopelessness is beginning to numb people's minds. Here and there, incidents occur and recur to nudge that nasty feeling.
On March 28, train communications between Dhaka and other parts of the country were disrupted for an hour and a half as a huge quantity of REC-elasted rail clips along a stretch of some two kilometres from the Banani level crossing to the Staff Road went missing. Hundreds of passengers suffered as train communications were suspended from the time of the detection of incident at about 9:30am.
Railway officials said, 'We came to know of the incident from the control room as the Teesta Express headed for the northern region faced trouble in passing the stretch.'
More than 15 trains had crossed the stretch before the incident could be detected. No untoward incident took place as the railway was still cool in the morning and did not expand. Railway engineers found 3,510 rail clips, weighing about four tonnes, missing from both the lines along the stretch.
The officials said the workers repaired the metre-gauge railway, with the clips taken off the bordering broad-gauge line immediately. Train communications resumed at 11:00am.
The officials said the clips might not have been removed in less than two hours and a half. The incident went unnoticed at a place near the navy headquarters and in front of the new gate of Senakunja. Apart from Railway Police, the army was asked to investigate the matter as the incident took place right across the cantonment area.
The incident caused a shockwave amongst train-travellers. Was it sabotage? The DG of Bangladesh Railway says it could be sabotage. Evidence unearthed by police investigation so far suggests it was an economic crime by an organised gang of thieves.
Sixteen suspects of the crime and recipient, of stolen goods have so far been apprehended by the police, including a security guard of the construction firm Max Automobiles, which was awarded a repair and maintenance contract for the relevant section of the railway. According to Railway officials, a Chinese company called CFICC is engaged in constructing dual gauge tracks for the Bangladesh Railway, so that both broad gauge and metre gauge railway wagons can be run on a single track. They are supposed to complete the construction by June and hand over the additional line of rail installed to Bangladesh Railway.
The theft has affected mostly the metre gauge track under use along the new line of rail that is being laid. As such, the cost of replacement of the clips may have to be borne by the contractors, whose associate is Max Automobiles. Some 600 to 700 workers of Max Automobiles have been engaged to work on the railway track from 1 a.m. to 4 a.m. at night when no trains run on that track. Stray incidents of theft of both clips and sleepers have been going on, according to reported confession of some of the culprits nabbed. Theft of over 3510 clips from the two kilometre-long railway stretch presumably took place within that time limit of pre-down hours on 28 March. It took more than 10 persons posing as contractor's men to remove the clips and take them away, presumably in a truck load, since one person could at best remove six of such clips per minute on the average.
The clips did not have any protective devise to obstruct removal or theft. This was because the dual gauge construction work was financed under Indian State Credit. The clips under the credit terms were to be exclusively imported from India, although imported clips with anti-theft devise are available in Bangladesh. Indian manufacturers who supplied the clips do not make clips with anti-theft device. The clips cost Taka 100 weighing about 900 grams each. 411 stolen clips have been recovered. The scrap-dealers who obtained the stolen goods have been identified and speedy action taken for criminal prosecution and damage control. But, to quote a commentator, "much more will have to be done both by the lawmen and the railway in order the restore the sense of security of the rail passengers which has been so rudely jolted."
Theft of iron and steel parts from public installations these days are not peculiar to poverty-ridden countries like ours any more. Like rising food prices and disturbed food grain markets around the world, the phenomenon of pilferage of iron and steel parts to obtain scrap prices comprise a global syndrome.
Daily Herald in Suburaban Chicago, U.S.A., reported Jan. 12, 2008: "On Dec 22, police pulled over a 33-year-old Lake-in-the-Hills Woman after she failed to use a turn signal.....(and) found 11 manhole covers in her car."
The Guardian in England reported in October 2004: "London has joined the select band of world cities cursed by mysterious phenomenon of manhole cover theft....The thieves made off with 93 covers in one week."
International Herald Tribune, March 29-30, 2008 commented, in a post-editorial: "Since 2004, dozens of cities on every continent, including Cardiff, Montr�al, Milwanku, Daegu, Chandigarh, and Johannesburg, have experienced manhole cover theft. Calcutta's daily Telegraph has estimated that at least 20,000 of the city's manhole covers are stolen every year. The Beijing Times claims that Beijing lost 24000 covers, valued at over $5 million, to theft in 2004 alone, and the China daily reported that on average, 12 are pilfered everyday in Shanghai. (If) you're not normally given to thinking about manhole covers, you still may be asking why a 33-year old woman would be driving around with 11 of them in her car. What motives could she, and all the other manhole-cover thieves around the world, have for making off with cast-iron discs weighing in excess of 50 pounds (22.70 kilograms)? This: In 2001, scrap metal sold for $77 a ton; at the end of 2004, it was $300 per ton, and today it is approaching $480."
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