DHAKA: Bangladesh has decided to scrap quota system in government services after thousands of students marched across the country in protest against the controversial policy of setting aside jobs for special groups. In Dhaka, mobs of students blockaded major roads, bringing traffic to a standstill. Police were deployed to the Dhaka University where clashes in recent days left more than 100 students injured by tear gas and rubber bullets.
"The quota system will be abolished as the students do not want it," Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina said in a statement in parliament. An apparently annoyed premier added that, "they have demonstrated enough protests, now let them return home". She said classes and examinations were suspended at all universities while the protests exposed ordinary people to worst sufferings which "they don't deserve".
The premier, however, said the government could make special arrangements for jobs for the people with disabilities and the backward ethnic minority ones. The students began the protests last week against discriminatory quotas for government jobs, leaving scores of people injured at the Dhaka University.
A group of protesters broke into the vice-chancellor's campus residence, forcing his panicked family to go into hiding. Hasina, however, said those who attacked the vice-chancellor's house were not "eligible to be students" and promised to punish the guilty.
