The Crime Desk: Biswa Sahitya Kendra has decided to temporarily close its nationwide mobile library operations from the beginning of the new year. Readers have formed human chains in various parts of the country demanding that this mobile library be kept running. However, Biswa Sahitya Kendra Director Shamim Al Mamun said that the service will be closed for a few days considering the time between the end of the project and the new extension.
In a statement, Biswa Sahitya Kendra said that Biswa Sahitya Kendra has been trying to achieve the intellectual and cultural excellence of the countrymen by operating mobile library operations for 25 years. The number of mobile library vehicles is 76. These vehicles distribute books in 3,200 areas of the country; that is, they work as small libraries. The number of readers of this library is about 5 lakh (regular and irregular). Biswa Sahitya Kendra alone cannot bear the cost of operating this large number of vehicles. Therefore, despite having its own vehicles, books, etc., manpower and maintenance funds have to be collected from various sources to run the program.
The director of the World Literature Center said that for the past six years, the government’s Ministry of Cultural Affairs has been providing financial support to the program. The ministry provides this support for two years in each phase. After the first phase ends, the ministry provides this support twice for two more years. The third phase of the project is ending on December 31. The officers and employees of the program are appointed based on the project period. Therefore, like every previous phase, their service period will also end on December 31. As per the traditional rules, arrangements have been made to pay all their dues (including four months’ additional salary) in full.
The director also said, “In the last days of the previous government, we came to know that the Ministry of Cultural Affairs would not fund this project anymore. But during the current government, there is a new hint that the Ministry of Cultural Affairs is interested in funding the project for another two years. Amidst all these uncertainties, the World Literature Center has taken some time to process the new project for a good reason. Therefore, even though the third phase of the project will end on December 31, it will take some time to complete all the formalities and get approval for the new phase of the project from the Ministry of Cultural Affairs. For the same reason, this program will be suspended for some time after December 31.”
In the statement, the World Literature Center further said, “We have informed the workers in advance and assured them that we will try our best to get the project passed as soon as possible. But some of the mobile library workers are demanding that the project activities should be continued without stopping even for a day. This program of the World Literature Center has been running since December 2018 with the support of the Ministry of Cultural Affairs’ nationwide mobile library project. This is not a program run entirely with the World Literature Center’s own funding. Moreover, the center does not have the financial capacity to run such a large program nationwide. But those workers were adamant on this matter and first staged a protest in front of the center and later started a hunger strike. I hope they will realize the reality and withdraw their announced program.”
