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Colours of Christmas
It is really appreciable how the Star Weekend celebrates every festival by publishing spotlight articles on the unique features of these familiar and age old celebrations. This week's spotlight article (published on December 25, 2015) on Christmas celebrations was also a pleasant read. The writer has brilliantly pictured the lively activities that make this happy occasion a festival for all. However, there are many Christian families in the remote rural areas, for instance, in the Chittagong Hill Tracts and in the hills of Netrokona who are extremely poor. I wonder what they think of Santa Clause, Christmas cakes and food galores which are important features of all Christmas celebrations in Dhaka.
Abedin Faruq
Shyamoli, Dhaka
CSR Practice in Bangladesh
Bangladesh is going to be a middle income country by 2021. There are many private and public universities in Bangladesh in which lots of students enroll every year to pursue higher education degrees and many of them face immense financial crisis to continue their study. Bangladesh Bank has initiated a mandatory rule for all the banks, which is to spend five percent profit for the Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) Fund which has to be spent in welfare activities. In fact the government should initiate this rule for all profit making industries or companies and if this money can be spent to finance the education of these students, it will be an epoch-making step to reduce discrimination in higher education. At present, many impoverished students cannot continue due to excessive semester fees and other costs and many of them drop out in the middle of their study.
Md. Imran Sarker
Department of Marketing, Begum Rokeya University
Flashback 2015
I would like to thank the Star Weekend for taking us on a flashback to the important events of 2015 through the article titled "Flashback 2015" (published on December 25, 2015). However, I would also like to mention that a lot of important events have been missed. For example, the year 2015 began with countrywide blockades and horrific petrol bomb attacks which took hundreds of lives all over the country. Thousands of Bangladeshi migrants became victims of human trafficking and lost their lives in foreign lands. The year 2015 also witnessed an unprecedented rise in assassinations and targeted killings which have shocked the whole nation. The mentioned five incidents are obviously significant but there are also other important events which happened this year and changed the nation's fate decisively.
Sabrina Khan, Banani, Dhaka
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