Visit Cox's Bazar Sea Beach the Longest Sea Beach on Earth.....

Cox's Bazar is about 150km from chittagong and is connected to the port city by bus, air and steamer services. It is a district town and is also the headquarters of the Cox's Bazar forest division. The town and surrounding plaaces have many colorful pagodas and Buddhist temples and are inhabited by, among others, many tribal people who have their own distinct customs and traditions.

Himchhari, located 18 km south of Cox's Bazar along the sea beach, is a nice place for picnic and film shooting. The broken hills and waterfalls here are unique spots. Another attraction is the Christmas trees. Ramu, about 10 km from Cox's Bazar on the main road to Chittagong,is a Buddhist village and boasts a number of Buddhist temples (khyangs) containing statues and images of Gautam Buddha in gold, bronze and other metals inlaid with precious stones. The most beautiful among the khyangs is the one near Bakkhali on Tiger Canal. The khyang house relics and Burmese handicrafts and a 10-feet high bronze statue of Buddha resting on a 6-feet high pedestal. The wood carving of this khyang is very delicate and refined.

Sonadia is a crescent shaped island about 7 km north-westof Cox's Bazar. The area of the island is about 9 sq km. Its western coast is sandy and is rich in different kinds of shells. Every winter thousands of fishermen camp here and make large hauls. The island is a cente of the dry fish industry. Another attraction of the sight of game birds migrating here in great numbers during the winter season. Maheshkhali, also an island off the coast of Cox's Bazar, has an area of 268 sq km. A range of low hills, about 300 feet high, stretches through the centre of the island and along its eastern coastline. On the top of the hills is famous Hindu temple, the adinath temple, which becomes a place of pilgrimage during the month of Falgun(March). The coasts of the island on the west and north form a low-lying tract that is fringed by mangrove forests.

25 lakh urban poor to get rice at 'fair price'.....Continue

'We have decided to distribute cards among 24.7 lakh ultra-poor families in Dhaka city, other divisional headquarters and district towns to ensure food security of the urban poor who are yet to come under any social safety net programs of the government,' Razzaque said after the meeting. It would require 1.5 lakh tonnes of rice in three months for sale of the staple at Tk22 a kilogram under the social safety net program, he added.

Those who do not have land or permanent income source will be eligible to get the cards to be distributed from February 21 initially for three months. 'But one must have the national identity card to get the fair price card. Preference will be given to families run by women,' the minister said. The meeting decided to extend the coverage of the fair price cards to all other cities across the country without reducing the rice price of OMS.

The food ministry at the meeting, however, proposed to sell low-priced rice to around seven lakh poor people in and around the Dhaka city and reduce the OMS rice price amid a rising trend in rice prices. The finance minister nad agriculture minister opposed the food ministry's proposal to re-fix the price of OMS rice at Tk 19, said an official who attended the meeting.

Matia argued that such steps might adversely affect the food grain production while the finance minister said the government should not give any more subsidies here, said the official adding that the two ministers also disagreed with the proposal for selling rice to the ultra-poor below the OMS rate. The food minister said that 10,000 families in each of 90 wards and 25 unions in and around the capital, 5,000 in each divisional headquarters and 10,000 in every district towns would be provided with the fair price cards to cushion the destitute against price hike of the staple.

Each card-holder would be able to buy 20 kilograms of rice a month at Tk22 a kg. Meanwhile, the price of fine rice further increased by Tk1-2 a kilogram in the last couple of days while the price of coarse rice remained stable at Tk 26-27 a kilogram, according to the official record of the food ministry. Earlier on Wednesday, the government decided to prepare a list of 4,000 poverty-hit families in every ward of Dhaka city for providing rice at low price.

The government resumed open market sales of rice in Dhaka and its adjacent areas on January 20 at Tk22 a kilogram to keep the rice prices at affordable level. The OMS of rice has already been extended to all other divisional headquarters - Rajshahi, Khulna, Barisal, Sylhet, Chittagong and Rangpur. The program would continue until the prices of rice stabilises, the mibnister said adding that the operation of OMS might be extended to the upazila level also if necessary.

The ward commissioners have been asked to list the poor families in cooperation with the lawmaders in the respective localities. 'We will ensure that the process of listing the ultra-poor families is not politicized,' the food minister said in reply to a query. He said the government this time was not willing to deploy Rapid Action Battalion or any other forces to control rice proces as such initiatives earlier did not work.

Bangladeshi Budget Implementation (Countinue)

.........The education ministry spent Tk 3,840 crore--51.9 percent--of it's total allocation of Tk 7,395 crore during July-December 2009, taking steps to distribute stipends and educational materials including textbooks in time. The primary and mass education ministry spent Tk 3,008 crore (45.5 percent) during the period from it's total allocation of Tk 6,611 crore. The expenditure by the agriculture ministry has been the lowest as it spent just Tk 1,074 corer or 18 percent of it's total allocation of Tk 5,965 crore. Ministry officials said the figure is low as they are yet to spend the subsidy amount, which constitutes a major portion of the allocation.

While performance of the Energy and Mineral Resources Division is well, the Power Divisions has a lackluster performance. The size of the total budget for this fiscal year is Tk 1,13,819 crore. These 10 ministries and divisions got allocation of Tk 47,221 crore. In the last budget session of parliament, the government passed the Finance and Budget Management Act to increase efficiency for implementation and to cut wastage. However, the ministries sufficiency in budget implementation has not improved significantly.

Seven of the 10 ministries and divisions could not implement even 40 percent of their total allocation. A finance ministry official said the pay like for civil servants in the new pay scale did not come into effect until December 2009, which kept the overall expenditure low. At the same time, money allocated for a number of large programmers to generate employment could not yet be spent.

The official said many ministries are yet to achieve the desired efficiency in implementing the budget mainly because of delay in tender processing and lack of efficient officials. An officer in the planning ministry said the World Bank temporarily withheld financing in many of it's projects after the government amended the procurement act. This also delayed implementation of the budget of the ministries concerned.

An official of the education ministry said they took initiaties to start implementing their programmers from the beginning of the fiscal year. Giving an example, he said except for a few cases, they distributed school textbooks in time, which generally gets delayed every year. Steps were also taken so that stipends and educational materials reach students in time. The energy and mineral resources division spent Tk519 crore (70.9 percent) of it's total allocation of Tk 732 crore while the power division spent Tk 678 crore (18.9 percent) of it's total allocation of Tk 3,578 crore in the first six months of this fiscal year.

Power division sources said they could not complete the tender processes for most of their power generation projects. Sources at the agriculture ministry said a major part of it's subsidy would be utilized in the next Boro season. The allocation to the ministry would be increased in the revised budget. Of other ministries and divisions, the health and family welfare ministry spent Tk 2,339 crore (33.5 percent) of it's total allocation, the water resources ministry spent Tk 384 crore (25.9 percent), the local government division Tk 3,122 crore (39.4 percent), the housing and public works ministry Tk 296 crore (23.7 percent), and the roads and railways division spent Tk 1,429 crore (27.0 percent).

Besides these 10 ministries and divisions, a few other important ministries also failed to spend their budget allocation in the first six months of the current fiscal year. The finance ministry official said many ministries wxpenditures during this period are lower than those in the same period of the last fiscal year. These ministries have identified delay in finalizing tender processes as the main cause for the low implementation of budget, he added.

by REJAUL KARIM BYRON.

ARTIST PROFILE ( Enaab Karim )

Enaab took a six years course in a drawing school where he was heavily inspired by the principal, Milmoy Barua. Enaab says that he wants to establish a new genre in art. He feels that the past movements in art have all been technical, based on differences in brushstrokes and the like. 'But I don't believe in this', he says, 'I never believe in pure abstract work and I think that many people do this kind of work today because it is easy to do it. In my works, I first draw something realistic and then convert this to abstraction.'

For Enaab, conveying any message through his work is the first priority. He criticizes other contemporary artists who nly produce 'theme-based' work, stressing on the fact that he does not believe in painting solely about subjects such as 'sadness, relationships, loneliness, love'. He wants to change the society and in particularly wants to 'directly hit people through the titles of my paintings'.

Enaab takes inspiration from 'the youth and from foreigners'. Foreign sinior artists inspire him a lot and he feels that they are 'not politicians like the artists in our country'. He says that foreign artists do not discriminate artists according to their age, 'unlike the artists here'.

Enaab is currently studying BBA in East West University. So why not pursue a career in fine arts instead? Firstly, he says, he does not like the environment in the Fine Arts Institute, now a faculty of Dhaka University, the prestigious university which was established by the great Bangladeshi artist Zainul Abedin. And secondly, he feels that he does not want to be directly influenced by the art school and believed that if there is too much influence on a person's work, he loses his uniqueness. So he self-studies through the internet, and says that he does not follow anyone, except for his mentor Milmoy Barua.

Blog title

ksdjlajfjlkjljjsdjfioenzxvohoensdufnweizvnsdfoweirnlsdoifelhflsdflk