Desk Report,
BUET protests police attack on protesting engineering students
BUET has protested against the police attack on protesting engineering students. The protest was expressed in a statement signed by BUET Registrar (Additional Charge) NM Golam Zakaria on Wednesday. The BUET authorities later informed the media.
BUET protests police attack on protesting engineering students
BUET’s statement said that students of BUET and other educational institutions have been protesting for several days demanding protection of the rights of BSc (Engineering) graduate engineers in getting jobs as assistant engineers or equivalent positions, consolidation, and elimination of quota-related discrimination in the relevant grades. In view of this, the BUET Vice-Chancellor and Associate Vice-Chancellor met the Education Advisor at the Secretariat on Tuesday and requested them to take necessary measures to quickly implement the students’ demands. In continuation of this, an eight-member committee has been formed today under the chairmanship of Muhammad Fawzul Kabir Khan, Advisor to the Ministry of Power, Energy and Mineral Resources, to examine the rationality of the professional demands of B.Sc. degree holders and diploma holders and make recommendations. The statement further said that today, when students of BUET and other educational institutions wanted to go towards the Jamuna residence of the chief advisor to fulfill the aforementioned demands, the police fired tear gas shells and sound grenades and lathi-charged them. Many students were seriously injured in this.
Condemning the police attack, the statement said that such an attack by the police instead of resolving the problem peacefully is in no way acceptable. The BUET administration is extremely angry, shocked and strongly condemns this behavior of the police.
The statement said that the BUET administration hopes that the government will take swift action against those responsible for the attack after conducting a proper investigation. The students blocked Shahbag for five hours yesterday with three demands: not allowing diploma engineers to write engineer before their names, not promoting any diploma engineers to the ninth grade, and giving graduate engineers the opportunity to enter the tenth grade job. Their pre-announced program today is the ‘Long March to Dhaka’. As part of this, the students took up positions on the main road of Shahbagh around 11 am. This closed the roads in Shahbagh and its surroundings.
The students left towards Jamuna around 1:30 pm. They tried to cross the Intercontinental Hotel intersection. Then the police stopped them. There was a scuffle between the students and the police. The police charged with batons. At one stage, the students dispersed.
The protesting students claimed that 50 to 60 students were injured in the police attack. On the other hand, the police claimed that the students hurled bricks at the police. Several police personnel were injured in the incident.
