Beginning shortly, Bangladesh will follow a six-day week instead of the five-day (Sunday-Thursday) schedule as the newly installed BNP-led government plans do away with Saturday as an “off day”.
Besides, Tarique Rahman, the BNP Chairperson and the head of the alliance government, which assumed office on February 17, may undertake an umrah, a voluntary, non-obligatory Islamic pilgrimage to Mecca in Saudi Arabia, before he embarks on a state visit to another country, sources close to the party leadership revealed.
Tarique Rahman, who returned to Bangladesh after a 17-year exile in the UK on December 25, 2024, before contesting a “limited” election – only a BNP-led and a Jamaat-e-Islami-led alliance were in the electoral fray with the Awami League kept out of the contest – is said to have taken a slew of decisions aimed at strengthening austerity in government and bureaucratic functioning.
A third crucial decision is to hold key meetings, including that of the Cabinet, at the secretariat and not the Prime Minister’s Office (PMO). This, the sources said, would be to push himself to drive over to the secretariat instead of letting the ministers and officials reach the PMO, which would entail additional expenditure.
The BNP Chairperson’s moves, the sources said, are dictated by “exigencies” involving the previous Mohammad Yunus-led interim regime’s malgovernance and disregard for established principles of bureaucratic and governmental functioning in the 18 months that it was at the helm of affairs in country wracked by ad hoc decision making, interference by external powers, political intrusion, rule-bending, excessive reliance on extra-government advice and profligacy.
“This is the plan that Tarique Rahman referred to in his maiden December 25, 2024, speech that he made immediately after landing at Dhaka airport. He had made months of preparations in consultation with some of his closest advisers before leaving London,” a BNP source close to the party leadership said.
In another critical decision, Tarique Rahman has drawn up a plan to measure the performance of each of the ministers, including those who hold full Cabinet positions as well as ministers of state.
This across-the-board performance scale will be reviewed at regular intervals, quarter and based on these results, Tarique Rahman will take decisions on continuing with the “achievers” and “showing the door” to laggards.
Tarique Rahman has already begun taking strong decisions – the one related to the key transfers and postings of some senior Army officers is a case in point – but sources said that “adequate caution must be exercised” to “not take too many critical decisions related to governance too quickly”.
While the BNP Chairperson will take a “gradual view in so far as the Awami League is concerned”, he will first assess all cases of unfair and illegal imprisonment/detention of liberation war veterans and freedom fighters.
Hundreds, if not thousands, of liberation war veterans, including senior Awami League leaders who had been marginalised by the party long before the Mohammad Yunus-led interim regime threw them in prisons on “cooked up charges” and “mere allegations”.
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One such individual who has already been granted bail and is undergoing medical treatment and observation at the Combined Military Hospital (CMH) and not PG Hospital is Faruk Khan, the elder brother of Summit Group Chairman Mohammad Aziz Khan, and a former Civil Aviation and Tourism minister between 2011 and 2013.
