CEO and helicopter
Recently, a news report was published in one of the leading Bengali newspapers with a photograph of a small helicopter which had just landed at Rajshahi Airport. I read the related news and understood that the CEO of a bank accompanied the owner of the helicopter to Rajshahi. They were in the middle of their business tour in the north-western part of Bangladesh. I found that the reporter strongly criticized the CEO for accompanying a prospective investor.
I would like to analyse the report from a different viewpoint. The persons who travelled using the helicopter are busy people. If they were using motor vehicles from Dhaka to Rajshahi region, the volume of work they had done would have taken at least three days. They were to travel sitting inside the vehicle for almost 30 hours. Secondly, if they were travelling by a vehicle they would have suffered physical and mental fatigue.
I believe, they were not supposed to use the helicopter if there were regular passenger air links between Dhaka and Rajshahi. The Dhaka-Rajshahi air link was abruptly stopped during the period of the last caretaker government.
When I was a child I found that there were two flights every day between Dhaka and Ishwardi. All these two flights were full of passengers. The price of gold was Taka 144 at that time and the one -way air ticket was Taka 40. When Bangladesh Biman operated morning flights every day between Dhaka-Rajshahi during the decade of eighties and nineties, the passengers had to fight for a ticket. Later, when the Dhaka-Rajshahi flight was re-scheduled to the midday and frequently failed time schedule, the number of passengers declined.
The people like CEOs of banks, university professors, and other high officials are entitled to airfare from their offices. They do not consider the price of the tickets. All of them have transport facilities in Rajshahi area through their local offices. On the other had, one who can maintain his own helicopter to travel inside the country is definitely a powerful man whose visit to the Rajshahi region must be encouraged, not criticized, for the greater interest of industrialization of the most neglected part of the country.
I observed in the developed countries that CEOs of the banks and high government officials visit prospective projects using logistic support of the investors. It is a convention and practice. We are to see that they do not give any privilege to the entrepreneurs who provide logistic support.
Recently, one company from Singapore started marketing air conditioners and refrigerators in Bangladesh. I requested the CEO of this company to set up his assembling plant at Rajshahi BSCIC area. He agreed. But when he learnt that Dhaka-Rajshahi flights are not in operation he refused to set up his assembling plant at Rajshahi. He said my products can travel by truck, but I cannot travel six hours by road from Dhaka to visit the assembling plant.
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