Zyma Islam

A standoff over unpaid bills between the government and independent power plants that run on heavy fuel oil is hurting people when they are enduring the worst power crisis in a decade.

Power outages during the three-day weekend were so frequent that they prompted the state minister for power to speak about the extent of the problem yesterday.

A man, Nurul Afsar Hawladar, who was picked up from Uttara on September 22 allegedly by Rab, was shown arrested in Cox's Bazar yesterday (October 9, 2022).

Even though the countrywide power cuts are statistically more frequent at the moment compared to last month, State Minister for Power Nasrul Hamid announced that load-shedding has decreased.

Nurul Afsar Hawladar, a 40-year-old marketing official at a real estate company, was picked up from Uttara by men claiming to be from Rab on September 22.

On one hand, there were at least 22 incidents of Hindu religious sites being attacked this year. On the other, there were at least seven incidents in which members of the minority community were sued or arrested under the Digital Security Act or other laws for "hurting religious sentiments".

Dhaka is losing $6 billion worth of labour productivity each year due to heat stress from extreme temperatures, said a study published yesterday.

Hearing the news of the mass graves discovered in Thailand in 2015, family members of three men who had left Bangladesh two years ago thought they were among those buried.

Sued as an adult when she was actually 17 in 2020, a Jagannath University student has been languishing in jail under the Digital Security Act for almost a month.

Five new incidents of enforced disappearance in Bangladesh were reported to the UN Working Group on Enforced Disappearances in the last one year.

Thirty-five percent of all capacity payments the government made to independent power producers (IPPs) over the last three years went to two private companies and a joint venture.

“How are our loved ones? Are they eating well? Are they being tortured? Are they… alive?”

While their families search every alleyway, survivors say that they lived right around the corner in the capital city. 

While the Bangladesh Press Council has proposed an amendment to the Press Council Act to impose stricter fines on journalists, the council’s records show the move is contrary to the sentiments of the journalists in its board.

No case can be filed under the Digital Security Act without the express approval of a special cell headed by the divisional commissioner, the ICT ministry proposed yesterday.

The burden of the arbitrary, overnight leap in fuel prices will be borne by the people, and the low-income group and the middle class will feel it in their bones.

The repayment of foreign loans in the power sector may worsen the country’s debt-servicing burden as the government will have to pay the lenders Tk 197,677.27 crore in the 30 years from 2024-25 fiscal.

The Cabinet Committee on Law and Order at the home ministry recently suggested that the legal age determining who is a “child” be lowered.

Around 3:00am last Wednesday, one family was seen hard at work making 400 bags of relief to be taken for distribution the next morning.

When the floods came this year, it was not just the rice in the paddy fields that were washed away, but also those stored at homesteads -- leaving many in a state of food insecurity.