NCPSRR president Mohammad Shahid Mia and general secretary Ashis Kumar Dey came up with the demand in a statement.
The organisation leaders also stressed the need for starting the vessel census immediately to prevent movement of illegal vessels.
According to the statement, the number of vessels registered by the Department of Shipping (DoS), the regulatory authority of the shipping sector, is only 14,000. However, there are more than 100,000 small and large vessels, including passenger and cargo ones, are operating across the country.
The terrible information on movement of more unregistered vessels than registered ones were revealed in written statements and speeches some former director generals of the DoS, it said.
River safety is not being ensured due to the large number of unregistered and unfit vessels and the risk of accidents continues to increase. Besides, the government is losing huge revenue every year due to non-payment of income taxes and VAT by lakhs of unregistered vessels.
Detective Branch (DB) of Dhaka Metropolitan Police (DMP) and National Security Intelligence (NSI) in a joint drive have arrested five officials of Biman Bangladesh Airlines for their suspected involvement in leaking the question of a recruitment test of the national carrier.
MT Operators Md Jahangir Alam, 36, Mohammad Mahfuz Alam Bhuiyan , 31, Md Enamul Haque, 27, and Office Assistants Aolad Hossain, 29 and Harunur Rashid, 40, were arrested from the capital’s Kaola area on Friday.
The members of the law enforcement agencies recovered soft and hard copies of the question, bank cheques, stamped documents, four diaries, admit cards of the examinees, mobile phone sets and cash from the arrestees during the drive.
According to DB, the one-hour long recruitment test of Biman was scheduled to be held on Friday from 3:00pm to 4:00pm. On Thursday night, detectives came to learn that the question of the test has been leaked.
After identifying the culprits, the detectives started a drive and recovered a total of 100 leaked questions from their possessions.
During primary interrogation, the arrestees confessed that they started to plan for leaking the questions since Biman issued a circular for the recruitment. They collected the original question through working with Biman high-ups responsible for preparing, printing and storing questions and sold it to the job seekers through Whatsapp.
The culprits collected hefty amount of money ranging from Tk 2 to Tk 7 lakh per question. They even collected signatures on non-judicial stamps to embezzle lands from the job seekers.
The arrestees also admitted that they have been involved in leaking questions for a long time.
The Biman authorities usually form a committee to oversee their recruitment process.
DB sources said that they’re currently investigating how the questions were leaked under the nose of this committee.
If needed, DB will interrogate the Biman high-ups, the sources said.
Source: United News of Bangladesh