BD govt may legislate against general strikes

DHAKA: The government and the principal opposition Awami League are locked in a battle of words over the justifiability of taking to strike to press for demands despite its apparently debilitating effects on the economy.

The verbal clashes, which have more and more members of the public joining in by the day, were prompted by the recent announcement by Local Government Minister Abdul Mannan Bhuiya in Parliament that a law would be enacted to ban strike in the country.

According to the minister, a nation aspiring for rapid economic and intellectual growth, could no longer afford “destructive political programme like strike”.

He said that with the parliamentary system of governance starting to take root in Bangladesh, there was no point in going for agitational actions like strike as the opposition had ample opportunities to raise its voice in parliament against any government action they found fault with.

A leader of the dominant Bangladesh Nationalist Party (BNP) in the ruling coalition has also since confirmed that at the moment, the government was contemplating to ban strike, which has become the favourite “weapon” of opposition political parties.

Awami League chief and immediate past Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina herself has said that “strike is an appropriate weapon to put the political opponent in a tight corner on any issue”.

But the BNP stalwart who does not want to be named clarifies that “right now we are not thinking of doing away with the right of trade unions in commercial organizations and industrial units to call strike in support of their legitimate demands”.

To be sure, many agree that a strike almost always has a negative impact on the economy. Even Shah ASM Kibria, former finance minister of the administration of Sheikh Hasina, says that the economy suffers a loss of as much as $60 million a day during a countrywide strike.

All trade bodies of the country, including the Bangladesh Federation of Chamber of Commerce and Industry and the Dhaka Metropolitan Chamber of Commerce and Industry, have been unanimous in saying that strike “destroys” the national economy and causes untold miseries to the self-employed people.

More than two million self-employed people live in Dhaka alone. They and their families are forced to go hungry on days of strike because they are unable to sell their goods.

Moreover, say businessmen, strike is always accompanied with violence. Authorities estimate that on average, more than 40 people are killed across the country in violence and bloody clashes during strike days.

More often than not, the victims are people who lived from hand to mouth, such as rickshaw pullers, day labourers and vendors.

Although they know the streets are dangerous during strike because of “enforcers” who sometimes even throw hand grenades, these people still try to eke out a living out of desperation.

Despite all these, Bimal Biswas, secretary of the left-leaning Workers Party, says strike is an effective weapon to realise the legitimate rights and demands of the people.

“This right was achieved through struggle,” he says. “People will not respect any law that is detrimental to their interest. If anybody thinks that strike can be effectively discouraged and resisted through legislation, he is really living in fool’s paradise.”

The English language “Daily Star” newspaper also ran an editorial saying: “Freedom is the life-blood of free media and therefore we cannot be (a) party to any legislation that will curb peoples’ democratic rights.”

But it added: “Strikes must end if we are to ever become a possible destination for foreign investment. Economic growth is the only way to rescue our people from grinding poverty from which they suffer. So if our politicians love the people as they claim, then they must stop calling strikes.”

The Bangladeshi language daily “Ajker Kagoj”, however, looks at the debate from a slightly different angle.

In one editorial, it said that if there were mutual tolerance and welfare of the people were manifest in all state activities, the necessity of strike as a political weapon would not arise at all.

And in such a scenario, said the newspaper, the ”undemocratic desire to enact law to ban strike would not lurk”.—Dawn/InterPress Service.

A poor post office profile

WHAT has been the performance of the Pakistan Post Office (PPO) in the year 2001? What has been the performance of the post office in the delivery of Eid mail this time? How happy are the people with the way the post office works, and with the general impression that the PPO leaves? What of the future as far as the postman goes? Will he survive?

Questions like these bother the mind as one hears from people that their Eid cards have not reached the addressees in many cases. In fact, questions and a quiet cynicism about the post office in the country are routine.

But is that the way it should be? In fact, as one citizen who has just had one nasty experience with the PPO in terms of the Urgent Mail Service (UMS), wonders there will come a point in the future when the concept of the postman will be rendered obsolete, primarily because the institution will become ineffective.

The problem, one must concede, is that the general public has also come to accept the PPO and its lowly standards, which are often symbolized by the shabby appearance of many local post offices. I cannot resist mentioning that the post office in the heart of the city, located in Hotel Metropole, in one of the affluent areas of the city, is so cheerless, and so lacklustre that it would win the first prize if there was one such category. There may be other post offices that would compete for this position.

Let me narrate the experience that one Karachiite has just had with the UMS, which perhaps reflects the PPO’s working. A book was sent to Islamabad on the 26th of last month, and it never reached the addressee. All efforts made by the sender and the post office staff here failed and the sender wonders whether the book will ever be retrieved.

Mention must be made of the tremendous efforts that were made to complain and contact the post office staff. It is often a struggle to contact any staff and employees concerned in government and semi-government departments in particular, and one is not keen to restate the whole frustrating experience all over again. But each time the post office staff spoke to the sender, they gave the impression that the sender was wrong, and that he should have used other postal systems that the PPO has to offer. Postal wisdom!

But then what is wrong with the UMS? It is more expensive than the normal postal services, and yet it doesn’t deliver. Broaden the scope of the question and contemplate why the Post Office doesn’t deliver as efficiently as it should? Is it because of the way this vital institution is managed? Is it due to the quality of the staff? Is it the resource factor that restrains the postal department to meet the challenge of the changing times.

One is unsure about the degree of awareness that the top brass of the PPO has. Do they realize that the post office, and specifically the postman, has to compete in a world of couriers, and e-mail, and a forever growing world of information technology which is confronting the traditional post.

It is rather dreadful to imagine what would have happened to the world of trade and commerce in this city, and elsewhere, had the speedy courier companies not arrived on the scene in the last decade or so. Or if the world of e-mail had not opened up, and continue to expand in a manner that it has become easily affordable by a growing majority.

People have on this subject pointed to the harassment that they have faced for years and years vis-a-vis the delayed delivery of the utility bills, and the payment which remains a source of misery to most people. Of course, the utility companies and organizations are themselves to blame in some measure for the delayed issuance of bills, and reading of meters. But then the post office added to the woes, until couriers stepped into the scene to take the load off the postal “white elephant.”

It is sad that the PPO has failed to keep up with the demand of the times. What is sadder is that the post office doesn’t ever talk about itself, and shares its vision and its plans with the people. One must mention here that two news items appeared in the local press recently, and the headlines indicate the disturbing content. One headline read “GPO irregularities exposed by Vigilance,” and the other read “PPO employees penalized for “mail-tampering.”

The first story is about “A Vigilance Cell, headed by Lt-Cdr Liaquat Ali (retd), has started carrying out investigations into the postal affairs throughout the Sindh province.” The details in the story reflect the mismanagement in the post offices in Sindh, and one hopes that the results of these investigations will be made public and that the media will keep Karachiites informed.

One knows such individuals who have stopped using the post office whenever they can afford. They use the courier when they value a postal item. But that is not the way out. Someone in Islamabad, for that is where it seems to begin with or end with, should take notice, and plan for a post office that will be able to keep in step with the times that lie ahead.

The present profile and image of our postal system needs a revamping.

PS: One postal department official said that with the funds they have, the public should be grateful they get any service at all, at times. I was grateful that he had at least spoken his mind.

Traffic jams and free press

“YOU have to do something sir, and immediately,” the peon pleaded. The chief district correspondent, a discerning and sympathetic person at all times, was at a loss, however. The obviously agitated helper had just finished describing a terrible traffic jam outside the newspaper’s offices. The CDC had lent a patient ear, even tried to look impressed and amused. Traffic jams were routine in the downtown area in any case. Besides, what could he do even if this one should really turn out to be the mother of all traffic jams? Careful not to insult the peon by dismissing his narration, but frustrated at not being allowed to get down to his work, he summoned an apprentice and asked him to go see if there was anything he could do to alleviate the problem reported by the helper. “That, I hope satisfies you,” he asked the peon who looked sceptical but withdrew.

To his surprise, the apprentice, when he returned, could only echo the peon’s sentiments. “You have to do something sir, and immediately,” he blurted. Asked rather impatiently to elaborate what he thought the CDC could do under the circumstances, he groped a while for a suggestion before admitting that he had no idea. Realizing by now that the problem was serious, concerned him somehow and was getting contagious, the CDC made more inquiries. He learnt finally, much to his amused embarrassment, that it involved him, after all. The traffic muddle had been caused by a tractor-trolley overloaded with straw that was a gift for him from a district correspondent of the paper. His disclaimers on oath have been unable to lay the matter to rest. To the abiding amusement of mischievous colleagues, the gentleman, now the news editor of a metropolitan paper, still gets referred to at the Press Club as Aqa Toori.

The trouble is, as Mr Ahmad Ali Khan, a Dawn chief editor, used to remind his colleagues journalism is condemned to remain a low-wage profession in Pakistan. It makes a good number of people vulnerable to conduct unbecoming a professional. Even those who cannot be bribed are not immune to ill-concealed offers and some of the mud sometimes sticks.

Given its implications for the credibility of the press, it is strange that the All Pakistan Newspapers Society should lobby for the abolition of a minimum wage for journalists. Still more strange is its claim that it is essentially advancing their interest and that the government’s reluctance to strike down the relevant law would amount to abolition of newspapers.

SIX men died in the city last week after smoking heroin from a single source. Despite the fact that the police were aware of at least four of the deaths — in fact handled some of the bodies and concluded that the heroin was probably poisoned — there was no autopsy. Neither was an FIR registered or a proper investigation launched.

The episode raises several uneasy questions. Do the police have that kind of discretion? Can they simply ignore some deaths by poisoning? Could the drug have been contaminated accidentally? In which case, has this been discovered and the remaining lot recalled by the supplier or are there more unsuspecting people at risk? Is it irrelevant whether one of the deceased was actually meant to die? Could there be a turf war going on between rival suppliers? Are the police protecting somebody?

The most benign interpretation of the police attitude probably is that the deaths were considered insignificant. But why? Are the addicts less human? The police probably realized that they could ‘afford’ to ignore the case since the families, hamstrung by the stigma associated with addiction, were not likely to push for a thorough probe. Allowing them the luxury, however, is not just wrong on a moral plane, it is just the recipe for promoting serial killers preying on the socially marginalized. There are, in this attitude, the seeds of another 100-murder tragedy.

A COLLEAGUE grown wary of innovative soliciting on the streets confessed to have been floored by some plain talk last week. After an elderly man had stood adamantly in front of his car for minutes, he said, he was forced to ask what the idea was. “Not one person has given me anything in an hour,” said the man. “You are going no further until you break the damned streak.” He obliged.

There are increasingly more people seeking (needing, they say) the alms in the city and less inclined (able, they say) to give. The problems is compounded further by the declining worth of the rupee. Most of the beggars now have a thing against coins. A child encouraged by his parents on the Eid day to be charitable was disappointed when a Rs5 note he held out was declined with disdain. “He sure did not like it,” he reported back.

THE average number of wedding invitations per Dawn staffer exceeded two last week, a historical first. A rather unusual invitation card carried this poem on the flap:

— ONLOOKER