Ganasamhati seeks removal of health minister, DGHS director general

Ganasamhati Andolon yesterday demanded removal of health minister Zahid Maleque and director general of Directorate General of Health Services (DGHS) Prof Dr Abul Kalam Azad due to "failure to tackle corruption in health sector."

The left-leaning organisation also demanded an immediate arrest of the "big fish" behind corruption in the sector.

To press home their demands, leaders and activists of the party observed a two-hour long sit-in progarmme in front of the secretariat from 11am.

Speaking there, the party's chief coordinator Zonayed Saki alleged that both the health minister and the DG of DGHS are patrons of corrupt persons although they are blaming one another for the mismanagement.  

"Despite all recent incidents of corruption in the sector, both are still carrying on their offices astonishingly; if they are not removed, then the prime minister will have to take the responsibility for this failure," he said.

Saki said that corrupt persons became so rampant that looting had endangered people's lives.

"Forgery over coronavirus test certificate is similar to genocide -- due to this fraud, the virus has spread all over the country and the country's economy is ruined," he claimed.

In his speech, Nagarik Oikya Convener Mahmudur Rahman Manna said the government has completely failed to deal with the coronavirus epidemic.

"Realising such deadlock, many leaders of the ruling party and the government's ministers have started fleeing the country; the finance minister is not in the country when an economic crisis is going on. Why did he leave the country, how did he go? We do not know," he said.

Manna hailed the sit-in programme and urged all other democratic political forces to extend support to such movement against "the government's misrule". 

Among others, Biplobi Workers' Party general secretary Saiful Haq, Left Democratic Alliance Coordinator Bazlur Rashid Firoz and recently dissolved Dhaka University Central Students' Union (Ducsu) Vice President (VP) Nurul Haque Nur also spoke at the sit in programme.