"The jute mill workers had been assured of giving ‘golden handshake’ before shutting down the factories, but they’re yet to be paid,” said BNP senior joint secretary general Ruhul Kabir Rizvi.
Speaking at a virtual press briefing from BNP’s Nayapaltan central office, he said, “Though the government made various promises, none of those has been fulfilled. The workers now think they’re being deceived.”
The BNP leader said shutting down the 25 state-owned jute mills is one of the examples of the government’s cruelty and apathy towards public sufferings amid the coronavirus pandemic.
He said the unemployed jute-mill workers are living an inhuman life as some of them are pulling rickshaws at this bad time of pandemic.
“The government, which has been founded on injustice and unfairness, never gives importance to the interests of workers and farmers. Rather, it sucks their blood and produces corrupt elements like Samrat, Khaled, Shamim and Barkat and thus thousands of crores of taka are being siphoned off.
On July 2, the government decided to shut down the production of 25 state-run jute mills under Bangladesh Jute Mill Corporation (BJMC) by clearing the cent percent dues of some 25,000 workers of the mills.
Rizvi said government’s image has been dented badly due to its failure to control the corona situation, ensure treatment and adequate testing facilities, check disaster and scams in the health sector, widespread corruption and money laundering, and growing inhuman acts of crossfire. “So, it’s now spreading false and cooked-up stories involving Ziaur Rahman with the August-15 carnage and Khaleda Zia and Tarique Rahman with the August-21 attack only to hide its misdeeds.”
He said the ‘villains’ of the August-15, 1975 massacre are still with Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina, and she does not speak against them for some unknown and mysterious reasons. “Those who remained in the cabinet and parliament after the bloody incident of August 15 had also been there in the cabinet and parliament of Sheikh Mujibur Rahman.”
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“Khandaker Mostaq Ahmed was the minister of Baksal till August 15, 1975 and later became president in parliament of Baksal. HT Imam, an adviser to the current Prime Minister, administered the oath-taking ceremony of Mostaq and the speaker of his parliament and may members of his cabinet has been doing politics under Sheikh Hasina. But she never called them villains.”
Turning down the Prime Minister's allegation against Ziaur Rahman of having involved in the murder of Bangabandhu, he said Zia used to work in the government like HT Imam, and he was the ‘second man’ in the army, not the ‘first man’.
Rizvi said Sheikh Hasina never blamed then Army Chief Major General KM Shafiullah who was in command of the entire army and he later became an Awami League MP. “It’s just as true as daylight that Awami League itself was involved in the August-15 while people close to the party involved in the August-21 incident in 2004 in a well-planned manner.”