The law and order situation is improving slowly after several days of widespread violence, Land Minister Amir Hossain Amu has claimed.The minister said this on Wednesday amid back-to-back shutdowns and blockades forced by the Opposition ahead of the parliamentary elections.
Earlier, the veteran Awami League leader chaired a meeting of the cabinet committee on law and order at the home ministry to assess the situation, ministry spokesperson Mahfuzul Haque said.
It was the first such meeting after the all-party interim poll-time cabinet took oath.
Amu said the election would be held as per the declared schedule.
He said around 2,000 long-haul vehicles had operated across the country on Tuesday despite the Opposition-backed blockade.
In particularly vulnerable zones the government had given them police escorts for the sake of safety, the minister said.
He said it had not been possible to provide security to the railways at all places because there were just not enough security personnel to man hundreds of kilometres of rail tracks.
He, however, said the overall law-and-order situation had improved.
The protesters, who found a soft target in the railways, frequently uprooted tracks at several places, causing massive derailments even of passenger trains.
On Wednesday, four passengers died and 50 others were injured when a train derailed in Gaibandha.
Amu urged journalists to publish these facts.
Industries, Housing and Public Works Minister Tofail Ahmed was also present at the meeting.
He said more than 1,100 nominations had been filed on Dec 2, the last date for submitting the papers.
Criminals, he said, had tried to create trouble that day to foil the process but their plan had failed.-bdnews24.com
