DHAKA, 3 January 2005 — Bangladesh is actively considering a proposal from India to implement a long dormant agreement on passenger rail service between Dhaka and Calcutta. India and Bangladesh signed an agreement in July 2001 during the Awami League rule to introduce a passenger rail service between Dhaka and Calcutta. But the agreement is yet to be implemented due to a lack of political will, sources said in Dhaka yesterday.
Communications Minister Nazmul Huda last week told Indian High Commissioner Veena Sikri that Dhaka would consider the proposal. He stressed the need to strengthen relations between the two neighboring countries on the basis of a SAARC spirit.
Huda later told newsmen that the agreement has not been implemented because the present government has not taken an active interest in it. The railway departments of both countries conducted trial services of passenger rails on the Joydevpur-Shialdah route following the agreement. Officials of the ministries of communication, home affairs, and finance, as well as representatives from other related organizations also participated.
Meanwhile, cold air sweeping in from the Himalayas killed at least 17 people across Bangladesh last week, hospital sources and a news report said yesterday.
At least 11 elderly people died from Thursday to Saturday in southern Barisal district, where temperatures dipped as low as 8.2 degrees Celsius.
Most developed hypothermia or pneumonia from exposure to the cold, said doctors at the Agailjhara Sadar Hospital where eight victims died. Three more deaths were reported in southern Jhalakathi district, two in eastern Jessore, and one in central Kishoreganj, the Bengali-language daily Amar Desh said.
Poor villagers are ill prepared for winter conditions in Bangladesh, a tropical delta region lying in the foothills of the Himalayas. Many of the impoverished nation’s 140 million people live in mud-and-thatch huts and cannot afford enough food, warm clothes or blankets.
The lowest temperature of 5.2 degrees Celsius was recorded Thursday in Srimangal. No deaths were reported in the area, 160 km northeast of national capital, Dhaka, the Meteorological Department said.
But the unusually low temperatures were slightly up yesterday, reaching 9.5 Celsius in Srimangal and 10.2 Celsius in Barisal. The cold weather also produced foggy conditions, disrupting road and river traffic across the country.
In another incident, at least 150 people were injured, many critically, in the southern Bangladesh port city of Chittagong yesterday as a boiler in a textile factory exploded, local fire brigade officials said.
The blast occurred in the ironing section making ready-made clothes for export to the West. Hospital doctors said many of the injured underwent emergency surgery.
