Chief Adviser’s Press Secretary Shafiqul Alam on Thursday said the government remains focused on all the issues including prices of essential commodities and traffic congestion as part of their continuous efforts to ease public sufferings.

“We have full attention on all the issues—be it labor unrest or the prices of essential commodities. We are discussing how citizens’ sufferings can be eased. There is no deficit in terms of our efforts,” he told reporters while responding to a question at a media briefing at Foreign Service Academy.

Deputy Press Secretaries Aburba Jahangir and Mohammad Abul Kalam Azad Majumder also spoke at the briefing.

Regarding traffic congestion, he said this problem is certainly related to public life and they are trying their best to resolve this.

Alam said Chief Adviser Prof Muhammad Yunus is talking to experts and also holding discussions within the Council of Advisers.

He said there are various pressure groups as they could not go for any movement over the last 15 years, stressing that the government is listening to them.

“They consider this interim government as their government. They think the government will listen to their voices. And the government is listening to them,” said the Press Secretary, adding that the government does not see any conspiracy behind this.

He said almost 99 percent of RMG factories remain operational and they are trying to solve the issues peacefully where there are problems. “We are trying to make sure that there is no unrest in any factory.” 

About 18,000 Bangladeshi workers who missed their deadline to enter Malaysia, Alam said the work of their verification has begun. “We have started the work of verification. We hope they will be able to go to Malaysia soon.” 

The Press Secretary said a separate facility will be set up at Dhaka University (DU) to carry out administrative works of seven colleges affiliated with the DU.

The representatives of the seven colleges talked to Education Adviser Wahiduddin Mahmud and Youth and Sports Advisor Asif Mahmud Shojib Bhuiyan and they came up with a decision that there will be a designated place in the DU so that administrative works of the seven colleges could be conducted, he said.

He said there will be separate registrar and dedicated officials, and it will be accomplished in consultation with the DU authorities and University Grants Commission (UGC).

Meanwhile, all the ministries will be asked to submit the lists of vehicles being used in public entities to the government through a format and then the number of the government vehicles and their conditions can be known, he said.