PM urges agitating students to return to home

Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina today urged agitating students to return home saying vested quarters infiltrated in their campaign for safer road to catch fish in troubled water.

“Now it is time (for you) to go back home and concentrate in your studies,” she said at a function at her Ganobhaban official residence.

The premier added: “We are now worried about your security as the perpetrators of arson attacks (in 2014-15) may stage sabotages . . . a quarter is out to catch fish in troubled water.”

Sheikh Hasina said non-student saboteurs were using school uniforms and ID cards while “school uniforms are being sold from (city’s) Gaosia Market and student ID cards from Palashi (market)”.

“The third force has appeared at the scene, if any catastrophe takes place, who will take the responsibility,” the premier said fearing the arsonists might stage identical clandestine attacks leading to loss of lives and serious harm to the children.

“The minor students therefore are under great threat,” she feared and urged their parents and principals and headmasters of their schools and colleges to take back the children from street.

The premier simultaneously urged all “not to pay heed to rumours and be misled by propaganda” and carefully verify any such propagations before taking those seriously.

The students are staging a massive street protest since a speedy bus rammed on two fellow students killing them instantly in front of Kurmitola General Hospital on Airport Road on July 29, 201.

Sheikh Hasina said her government could realize the students’ sentiment as two of their friends lost lives in the last week’s unfortunate bus crash and was “taking all measures to bring the traffic system in order”.

“You have to realize what had happened in Bangladesh in 2014 and 2015. Many students’ sustained critical injuries in arson attacks in those attacks and now those arsonists may stage identical incidents which may claim many lives,” she said.

The premier said law enforcement agencies would check licenses and other documents of vehicles as the Traffic Week began today.

She said the students, if they desired, could voluntarily assist traffic police but abandon their overenthusiastic move of performing themselves as traffic policemen.

“They (students) have done enough, and we didn’t bar them from doing what they wanted,” the premier said.

She said law enforcement agencies so far patiently helped students as they tried to regulate vehicles and now they must return home and concentrate in their studies.

Sheikh Hasina also urged the students to use the modern technology for constructive purpose and welfare of the people.

The prime minister said the draft of the traffic law would be passed in the next parliament session incorporating necessary rules for drivers and helpers training and mandatory provisions for their leisure.

Simultaneously, she said, everybody needed to obey the traffic rules while her government was leaving no stone unturned to improve the traffic management system.

“Today’s students are the (future) leaders of the country. So they have to learn about discipline, punctuality, cleanness,” she said the students have to learn about the qualities from now.

Sheikh Hasina said deaths of the two students of Shahid Ramij Uddin College on July 29, 2018 personally saddened her very much as “for a long time I am repeatedly calling upon the drivers as well as a passengers to obey traffic rules”.

She said now the education ministry was asked to teach the students about traffic rules from school level while directives were issued for regulating traffic in front of schools and colleges in particular.

Many projects were taken to clearly identify the zebra crossing on road and construction of over bridges and under passes near schools, she said.

Sheikh Hasina said the last BNP government had planned to close down the Bangladesh Road Transport Corporation (BRTC) operations in regulating traffic, leaving the sector completely on private owners.

But after coming to power in 2009 her government reverted the plan and took a project to give training to every driver.

The prime minister urged the students and youths to use the internet and social media for the good causes, refraining from spreading propaganda and filthy language.

Sheikh Hasina denounced the rumour spread in the Facebook yesterday that four agitating students were killed in Awami League office.

“Rather the Awami League office came under attack by some unruly youths who used firearms, injuring about 18 party workers who are taking treatment in the different hospitals,” she said.

The premier added: “A modern technology, which is used for creating human resources and making the lives of people beautiful, should not be used wrongly.”

The prime minister criticized a section of newspapers for their role in focusing on yesterday’s incident and current students’ agitation questioning if they did not like healthy democratic process.

“They always want anything except democracy, as they get more importance in that situation and an opportunity to put on flag on their car stand,’ she said asking them to join politics floating parties to secure the peoples mandate if they wanted to get the flag.

But, she said “what right they have to create any trouble and misunderstanding among people”.

Sheikh Hasina said her government never gagged any media. Rather, licenses were issued to all existing private television channels during the Awami League government.

She said there are several hundred newspapers in the country and permissions were given to anybody who wanted to publish a newspaper.

Most of the newspapers are writing whatever they wish and all television channels are criticizing the government in free style “but spreading of rumours to create bad situation is not desirable”.

Sheikh Hasina said her government was working hard to build a Digital Bangladesh as it was not easy to implement and Bangladesh was not connected with any internet gateway when Awami League came to power in 1996.

BNP government denied connecting Bangladesh with submarine cable free of cost on the lame excuse that it could leak the country’s secret information.

The prime minister reiterated her call to the parents, guardians and teachers of all educational institutions to take care of their children and students so that none of them can be associated with terrorism, militancy and drug.

“We want our children to get a better life and build the country more prosperously . . . we are doing our best to infuse patriotism in them,” she said.

Source: BSS