Syed Shemul Parvez :
Yaba smuggling across the country continues despite government’s steps including zero tolerance against it.
Most surprising matter is that the members of the law enforcement agencies are also being involved with this crime?
Beside yaba, other foreign drugs like Crystal meth, also known as Ice, is available in the market. Ice is a nerve stimulating and expensive drug which can cause serious health degradation.
Youth from affluent families of the capital are the regular customers of these drugs, source said.
Experts said, avoiding the big shots of smuggling and arresting only carrier and small traders, it is quite impossible to control yaba trafficking.
It is learnt that nowadays yaba pills are trafficked into Bangladesh with the drug traders finding new and cheaper gateways as government has taken many initiatives to control it.
Based on intelligence information, BGB officials said there are about 11 yaba factories on the Indian borders line which are used to send the drugs easily to Bangladesh.
The Teknaf (the regular entry point) recently being in the spotlight, the drug smugglers have now made Rowmari upazila of Kurigram their preferred entry point.
According to intelligence reports, yaba pills come from Myanmar and enter through the Indian states of Assam and Meghalaya.
More smuggling points have also been marked by law enforcers in Sylhet, Sunamganj and Habiganj.
According to sources, Yaba pills are being carried in cars, buses or motorbikes from Myanmar to Meghalaya, and reaching the border in Kurigram. From there, drug traffickers in India throw packets of yaba pills over the barbed wire fences and their Bangladeshi members collect them. From Rowmari, 90 percent of the pills are carried by the river route and distributed to different destinations in Dhaka and surrounding areas.
When asked about the drug trafficking into the country, Dr Zia Rahman, Professor of Criminology, University of Dhaka told the New Nation that there are many weak points at our border checkpoints that allow such ease of trafficking.
Besides, there is a lot of demand of drug among the youths in the country. So if you can’t reduce the demand first, you won’t be able to control the trafficking, he said.
Reducing demand, there should have various mass awareness programs, parents’ guideline as well as moral education. But truly speaking there is an acute negligence over the awareness programs. The pattern of NGO work should be changed on the issue, Dr Rahman added.
Recently a constable of Chattogram Metropolitan Police (CMP) has been arrested with 14,000 pieces of yaba pills in Daudkandi Toll Plaza area of Cumilla while smuggling the drugs to Dhaka from Chattogram.
In this connection, when asked Md Kamruzzaman, Assistant Inspector General (AIG) of Media and Public Relations of police, told the New Nation, in fact the origin of yaba and others drugs is from foreign countries like Myanmar and India. So for smuggling yaba, the forces on the border are mainly responsible.
However, we are trying our level best to control smuggling drugs across the country.
For your kind information we have already taken the initiatives of dope test for the members of law enforcements. Even those who are being marked as dope positive, we generally sack them from the profession, AIG added.
Home Minister Asaduzzaman Khan Kamal said, “The number of drug addicted people is about 80 lakh in the country. Everyone from the government agencies to the public representatives have to come forward to bring them back to normal life.
Our next generations will be destroyed if we fail to bring them back to right track.
