Letters to the Editor

Taking advantage of the demographic dividend
The article titled "The delusion of Bangladesh's cheap labour" by Nahela Nowshin, published in The Daily Star on 13/6/2015 caught my attention. She emphasised the importance of investing in human resources to get the benefits of demographic dividend. But we have to identify the key areas for investment first. We have an organisation called the "Bureau of Statistics". But they do not publish any data on skills required in various economic sectors. For this reason we see a high number of MAs, MBAs and BBAs but few engineers, technicians, chemists and IT specialists. It is the responsibility of the state to inform the citizens about opportunities in different sectors of the economy. Only then can we take the advantage of the demographic dividend.
Bazlur Rahman
Uttara, Dhaka

Fire in high-rise
This refers to the report, "Blaze in Mumbai high-rise kills 7" (June 8). There are so many high-rises in Mumbai and more are being built, yet the city does not have helicopters to fight fires in towers. The Mumbai Fire Brigade should be equipped with helicopters to fight fires like other cities in the world such as Singapore and London. Such killer fires occur at regular intervals and the main reason is air conditioners, which sometimes have faulty wires. People fail to maintain their AC's, like not changing wiring - AC's need three-phase wiring and not single-phase.
 Simply blaming the fire brigade -- that they reach late -- does not present the full picture since there are traffic snarls. Politicians talk of making Mumbai a Shanghai. But not even a single fire brigade in Indian cities is equipped with helicopters to fight fires in high-rises. There are no fire escape chutes even though it is mandatory by law. After every seventh floor, there should be a relief floor -- this law is flouted in a number of cases. Even when there is a relief floor, it is used as a godown by residents. The metre room is built near the staircase which is dangerous, as it poses the risk of residents getting trapped and of a fire in the metre room itself. Ideally, metre room should be located at the back of the building.
Deendayal M. Lulla
On e-mail