Civil aviation and tourism minister Rashed Khan Menon addresses a meet the press at Dhaka Reporters’ Unity in the capital on Friday.
Civil aviation and tourism minister Rashed Khan Menon on Friday said he felt that the government lacked the behavior required to run democracy.
Menon, also the president of Workers’ Party of Bangladesh, made the comment answering to newsmen at a press meet organised by Dhaka Reporters’ Unity in the capital.
Replying to a question on the government’s success and failure, the minister said that the government could not curb corruption though it had taken a large number of proper initiatives. ‘If corruption could be curbed, the country’s growth could be higher by 2.5 per cent more.’
Regarding the recent union parishad elections, Menon criticized the election commission and said that the EC could not take timely steps. ‘It would have been better if they could earlier take the steps they are now taking.’
The minister said that the government, after assuming power through 2008 national elections, could be run in a secular and democratic way and could go back to the state’s four basic principles through the 15th amendment to the constitution.
He, however, lamented that the constitution still contains ‘Islam as the state religion’ which cannot go with the spirit of secularism. ‘We [Workers’ Party], however, had given note of descent on the issue.’
The minister alleged that the BNP-Jamaat alliance committed killings, arson attacks and destruction in the country since 2012 in the name of anti-government movement and, especially, during the judgements of war crime trials.
‘As a result, some administrative steps were taken against them,’ he said, adding that the government could handle it politically taking people with them instead of taking administrative actions.
The ‘opposition’ BNP-Jamaat alliance had harmed themselves by doing destructive activities, he said and added that BNP had become ‘very weak’ as they could not launch democratic movement.
‘Whom should I call opposition party? Yes, it is BNP,’ he said, stating that he should not comment on JP as they were in the government as ‘they are now with us and also in the opposition in the parliament.’
He called detained journalist Shafik Rehman one of his favourite personalities but said, ‘We have to lose our sense and wit if the news published in different media is true.’
The minister also shared his activities and plans to develop tourism in the country and expected that the sector would create about three and a half lakh employment by 2018.
The minister said that his ministry had taken initiatives to launch campaigns at home and abroad to attract the tourists, mainly from the Asian countries.
Menon informed that the government had chosen four places in the southern region to construct the country’s largest airport after the name of Bangabandhu, the country’s founding president Sheikh Mujibur Rahman.’
He said that the government is now at the stage of feasibility study of those sites.
He also said that the government would upgrade the Cox’s Bazar airport as an international airport and 16 per cent of the works were so far completed in this regard. ‘I expect that the work would be completed by 2018.’
The minister said that Bangladesh Biman was making profit in last two years and expected that the airline would continue to make profit in the ongoing year also.
DRU president Kamal Uddin and general secretary Raju Ahmed were conducted the press meet.
Source: New Age