“In the last 5 years I have not spoken to anyone over the phone except my mother; I had to use WhatsApp or something like this. Why should I think that someone is intercepting my calls?”
Fahim Mashroor, the former president of BASIS, posed such a question at a dialogue titled Challenges and Actions of the Interim Government organized by the Center for Policy Dialogue (CPD) in Gulshan on Thursday (August 14). He emphasized on reducing the salary disparity of government employees; and ensuring energy and cyber security.
Blaming the 2015 Pay Commission for the quota reform movement, the BdJobs co-founder said that the salaries of government employees were almost doubled during that time. But the private sector could not do that. Because the government can do this by issuing SROs and printing money. So, 90 percent of university students are now interested in getting government jobs. But it is not realistic. So, a reform is needed here. Salaries of government employees need to be reduced.
Fahim said, we were very enthusiastic about a generation of technology. They thought technology would give freedom. Democracy will be established. Power will be brought into the hands of the people. But it didn’t take us long to break the cycle. Within 10-12 years we have seen that technology is undermining the basic rights of citizens instead of empowering people. Freedom is being taken away. In the last 10 years in Bangladesh, our freedom has been undermined by the use of artificial technology.
Fahim lamented that although 8-10 thousand crores of Tk. (MFS) is distributed among the people every year using technology, a large part of it is not utilized properly. He said that common people are being deprived by using technology in this way. If the technology is used correctly, the result will be different.
In the original article, the executive director of CPD Dr. Fahmida said that problems like rising commodity prices, increasing defaulted loans, liquidity crisis in the banking sector, slow export earnings, slow remittance flow, stagnation in private sector investment should be put to an end.
Badiul Alam Majumder, editor of Citizens for Good Governance (Sujan); Fahim Mashroor, co-founder of BDJobs; Rasheda K Chowdhury, former advisor to caretaker government; Muslim Chowdhury, former finance secretary; Tofail Ahmed, local government expert; Nusrat Tabassum, coordinator of anti-discrimination movement and others participated in the dialogue.
Badiul Alam Majumdar, In the dialogue said that, the interim government will not be able to do everything properly. He believes that political consensus is needed to strengthen administrative reforms besides prosecuting money looting.
Former finance secretary Muslim Chowdhury claimed that there are many elements of dictatorship in this constitution, those should be removed. If we leave those in the hands of political parties, we will fall into a black hole again.
He also demanded that dictatorial elements should be removed. Local government should be separated from central government. In the middle of his speech, Nusrat Tabassum, the coordinator of the anti-discrimination student movement, asked Muslim Chowdhury, “Do you want to amend the constitution or write anew?”
Muslim Chowdhury was embarrassed by this question. In response, he said that it is not possible to amend the constitution, it should be rewritten.
Explaining this, the general secretary of Sujan, Badiul Alam Majumdar said, “We have taken an oath to this president. That means we still have the constitution. Now the government has to decide whether to eliminate it or reform it.
Local government expert Tofail Ahmed said, this government should rewrite the constitution, they may not be able to implement it. They should write this constitution for the next government so that they can implement it.
Rasheda K Chowdhury, a former advisor to the caretaker government, demanded to find out the amount of financial corruption that has been done in the name of building the Sheikh Russell Digital Lab, besides getting out of the culture of impunity.
