Md Shahnawaz Khan Chandan

To live off the streets of Dhaka is not merely living in hunger, it also comes with an immense lack of security. For the “tokai” -- a child waste picker -- living in the capital, hunger and malnutrition is almost the least of their concern, with much bigger dangers lurking around all the time.

Md Rasel, a 27-year-old peddler, regularly visits hospitals and diagnostic centres in Dhaka’s Sher-e-Bangla Nagar area to collect recyclable medical wastes.

At around 9 AM, two massive excavators were moving wastes from a waste dumping platform at Matuail Sanitary Landfill. Deafening noise from the engines and their gigantic moving arms equipped with teethed steel bucket could not make any impression on 10-year-olds Shabuj and Shajib.

Desperate and discomposed, they would arrive at the doors of private hospitals to get treatment for Covid-19.

More than 32,000 substitute and temporary workers of the state-run jute mills, which were closed on July 1 last year for modernisation, are leading miserable lives as they have not received their dues yet.

Hundreds of thousands of workers in the readymade garment sector have been laid off since last year, despite factory owners receiving a Tk 8,000 crore stimulus packagefrom the government to pay their salaries during the pandemic.

The health services division utilised only 21 percent of their allocations from the Annual Development Programme in the last nine months, said a report of the implementation, monitoring and evaluation division of the planning ministry.

“Please help me to find Actemra 400mg injection (Tocilizumab) for my Covid patient mother. She is currently in ICU. Please help…” read a recent appeal by Sazzad Hossain on a public Facebook group.

Sanzid Hasan was five when his parents, impoverished residents of Mohammadpur’s Geneva Camp area, discovered that he could not communicate as easily as other children.

Zaheda was rushed to a private clinic in Chandpur district’s Shahrasti upazila on May 24 last year.

The government has decided to lease out all 25 state-run jute mills to the private sector despite initial plans of reopening them either through joint venture, public-private partnership, or a government-to-government (G2G) agreement.

When the Indian subcontinent was pushed into violent communal turmoil and was being partitioned as its consequence, one person firmly stood out as the guardian of secularism, unity and peace. He was Maulana Abul Kalam Azad.

How many people with disabilities are there in Bangladesh?

Due to overwhelming treatment costs, scarcity of trained professionals and unavailability of equipment, cancer care is still inaccessible to hundreds of thousands of cancer patients in Bangladesh.

The government initiative to block pornography websites has proved a futile exercise due to lack of technological knowhow and concerted efforts from the state agencies.

With no segregation and recycling facility, Aminbazar landfill has been struggling to manage daily collection of more than 3,000 tonnes of solid waste.

Alleged corruption of a union parishad (UP) chairman has deprived several thousand cyclone affected families in Satkhira’s Ashashuni upazila.

The recent move by Dhaka South City Corporation to “reform” the city’s waste collection has not fared well with citizens, who say they are being charged excessively by the newly-appointed contractors, and the service is substandard.

“It is a jail, isn’t it? Have you ever heard that a person lived happily in a jail?”

There was a lavish ceremony inside Karim Jute Mills Corporation on the outskirts of Dhaka yesterday to mark the disbursement of due wages and other benefits of the laid-off and retired workers of 25 shuttered state-run jute mills.