One is 70 and the other half his age. The former is in charge of education in Bangladesh, and the latter takes care of the government’s information technology affairs.
Published : 20 Apr 2015, 02:26 AM
But Nurul Islam Nahid and Zunaid Ahmed Palak had no difficulty in mingling with more than a hundred children journalists rushing to take selfies with them.
The people of this country do not usually get to have the company of ministers by managing to overcome the protocol barrier except during elections.
But the children journalists of hello.bdnews24.com got an opportunity to be in touch with the political dignitaries at the launch of ‘Amar Kotha, Amader Kotha’, a collection of reports and essays by the website’s young reporters.
Education Minister Nahid arrived sharp at 3:30pm. State Minister for ICT Palak arrived 10 minutes later.
Before the programme commenced, a child journalist mustered enough courage to walk up to Nahid with the request: “Sir, I want to take a photograph with you.”
The minister stood up quietly, lined up a few other children journalists on his both sides, while one of their colleagues kept clicking the camera.
Emboldened, another made a plea for taking a selfie with the minister.
The minister responded enthusiastically: “Come, come, of course.”
In the meantime, Palak, too, was besieged by selfie-seeking children.
But they were not just keen about selfies. The makers of future Bangladesh also asked the ministers a lot of questions to satiate their curiosity.
Before the programme started, the education minister went from table to table talking to the children.
And as he did so, he also had to answer some tough questions put by the young ones.
Two of the more older children journalists were heard telling the minister the difficulties they had faced in appearing for the SSC exams this year amid blockade and shutdowns.
Referring to the agitations, Nahid said, “Everyone says my child is having problems sitting the exams. But 1.5 million children of mine are taking them.
“They are the parents of one or two children. I am the father of 1.5 million.”
The ministers spoke about their visions of schools, teachers, education, the Internet and new technologies.
Both of them also spent some time with the parents of the children after the programmes and even entertained their requests for selfies with them.