Editorial | The Daily Star

  • State-owned banks must be freed of influence

    State-owned banks have assessed that influential defaulters are to blame for the epidemic of loan defaulting and the continuously

  • A serious threat to public health

    The government's ban on import and sale of meat and bone meal (MBM), a kind of poultry feed, is quite alarming for a number of reasons, including the fact that MBM poses a major public health risk.

  • Make footpaths user-friendly for the visually impaired

    It is very unfortunate that the initiative taken by the two city corporations of Dhaka to install tactile tiles on footpaths to facilitate the movement of physically challenged people has failed to bring any positive results.

  • Powerless against sand lifters

    It is unthinkable that illegal sand sifters have the gall to physically attack an assistant commissioner (land) and other officials.

  • Strictly enforce medical waste management

    One needs hardly restate the importance of proper medical waste management (MWM). Yet apparently, this matter of public health has not gotten the attention it deserves from the related quarters.

  • State must show firmer commitment

    In the first 18 days of this year alone, 23 incidents of rape and attempted rape were reported in a leading Bangla daily.

  • Ensure equal pay for equal work

    While more and more women have been entering the job market every year—both formal and informal—they are still facing serious wage discrimination.

  • Centralising decision-making is unhelpful

    The rationale being used by a number of privately-owned banks to bring back an archaic management practice, i.e. centralising all decisions and stripping branches of that crucial role that made banking easy for customers is that it will stop the flood of nonperforming loans (NPLs) that has engulfed the banking sector.

  • Serious breach of port and national security

    The fact that a gang comprising clearing and forwarding (C&F) agents and importers have been able to clear some 4,000 consignments

  • Now, Rohingyas from India

    Since the beginning of the year, no less than 1,300 Rohingya Muslims crossed the border into Bangladesh from India, where many of

  • Innocent workers must not be victimised

    In the aftermath of the violent protests that engulfed the garments factories in Ashulia and Savar industrial zones, the police have filed cases against 215 individuals and a further 1,000 unnamed garment workers on charges of vandalism and looting and reportedly more than 800 workers have been laid off.

  • Alarming suicide rate at public universities

    In an alarming development reported by The Daily Star on Wednesday, the suicide rate at public universities has shown a dramatic upward trend, with a reported case of 19 deaths in five universities last year.

  • Traffic management is not a short-term affair

    The Dhaka Metropolitan Police (DMP) is planning to include school and college students as volunteers in the fortnightly traffic programme that started on January 15.

  • Make Ducsu centre of all campus activities

    It is good to learn that the DU authorities are hoping to hold the Dhaka University Central Students' Union (Ducsu) election by March 31 this year.

  • Crack down on illegal dredging

    How is it that despite there being a law making extraction of sand from riverbeds a punishable offense, influential and politically connected individuals continue to do so, with complete immunity?

  • Appalling treatment of migrant worker in Malaysia

    The treatment meted out by the Malaysian immigration police to a Bangladeshi worker who has been working legally in the country is simply unacceptable.

  • Hefazat chief's comment unacceptable

    We take serious issue with the comments of the chief of Hefazat-e-Islam (HI), that girls should at most attend school up to class IV or V, since educated girls are prone to be “disobedient”. Not only that, he made those present at the assemblage take a vow to comply with his views.

  • Two billion jobs to be at risk by 2030

    With rapid technological advancement and the ever-increasing digitisation of various industries, a large number of expatriate workers employed in blue-collar jobs may have to return home by 2030 due to job displacement.

  • chicken pox in Rohingya Camps

    Myanmar's latest ploy to push out Rohingyas

    After forcing almost a million Rohingyas to flee from their homes and take shelter in Bangladesh, Myanmar is now taking steps to construct a concrete structure in the no-man's land on its border with Bangladesh in Bandarban's Ghumdhum area.

  • Who is maintaining Dhaka's cleanliness?

    The piling of garbage under the Mouchak flyover is another example of the sorry state of management plaguing Dhaka city.

  • Extrajudicial killings undermine the legal system

    According to a local rights organisation, extrajudicial killings crested in the outgoing year, the highest number in our history. The spike can be attributed to the government's anti-drug drives

  • Stop this delinquency once and for all

    The recent incident of clash, allegedly, between two groups of Jubo League men over the collection of extortion money and the demarcation of the territory for extortion in the capital's Mirpur area, that include the vendors using the footpaths in that area, is a cause for concern. In the clash, one Jubo League man was killed and two others were injured.

  • How did Rohingyas get Bangladeshi passports?

    As reported by the domestic and international media, dozens of stateless Rohingya individuals are being deported to Bangladesh from Saudi Arabia. They allegedly went to the country with Bangladeshi passports, which they had obtained from smugglers who manufactured fake or counterfeit documents for them. Some of them are now being sent to Bangladesh, having spent years languishing in jail, while some others still remaining there.

  • Public consultation a must for Delta Plan 2100

    A two-day conference jointly organised by Bangladesh Poribesh Andolon (Bapa) and Bangladesh Environmental Network (BEN) is to start from January 11 bringing together environmental experts to inform the public about the government's long-term strategy Delta Plan

  • India's problematic citizenship bill

    The Indian government has followed up on its words and passed a bill in its lower house of parliament that would accord Indian citizenship to non-Muslims from Afghanistan, Bangladesh and Pakistan who have lived in India for six years, even if they are without any document.

  • BRTC's nagging pain

    The temporary shutdown of a depot of Bangladesh Road Transport Corporation (BRTC), which pushed on for the second day on Wednesday before being called off at midday, is the latest indication of the sad state of affairs in this very important state entity.

  • Great expectations from PM's fourth term

    We congratulate Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina as she begins her fourth term as the premier of the country, with three consecutive terms running to her credit.

  • Address RMG workers' grievances

    The Dhaka-Mymensingh highway near the Hazrat Shahjalal International Airport has been the flashpoint for ongoing workers' protest the last two days.

  • New cabinet with new faces

    The prime minister has taken a bold step in infusing the cabinet, more than 60 percent, with new faces, a good number of them young and first-time MPs. This is perhaps the first cabinet of Sheikh Hasina where so many old stalwarts of the party, and of her allies, have made way for so many untried ones.

  • Deadly skin whitening

    A recent study by a coalition of NGOs from around the world, the Zero Mercury Working Group, has found that levels of mercury in skin-whitening products being sold in the country are dangerously high—ranging from 90 to 16,000 times higher than the 1ppm (parts per million) limit set by 2013 Minamata Convention on Mercury. Given the deadly nature of mercury, which has the potential to cause permanent skin damage, kidney failure, skin cancer and other fatal diseases, this signifies a gross failure of the Bangladesh Standard Testing Institute (BSTI).

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