Education Minister Dipu Moni has arrived in Sylhet to meet the protesting students of Shahjalal University of Science and Technology (Sust), who demand the vice chancellor’s removal.
The flight carrying Dipu Moni, Deputy Minister for Education Mohibul Hassan Chowdhoury and Expatriates’ Welfare Minister Imran Ahmed landed at Osmani International Airport at 8:50am on Friday.
The three are scheduled to hold a discussion with students, teachers and various organizations of the university from 4pm to 7pm in a bid to resolve the ongoing crisis there.
They are expected to leave for Dhaka from Sylhet airport on an 8:20pm flight.
Earlier, the Sust authorities removed the university proctor Dr Md Alamgir Kabir, whose resignation was one of the demands of the protesting students.
Md Ishrat Ibne Ismail, associate professor of the English department of Sust, replaced him, according to a notice signed by Registrar Isfaqul Hossain on Thursday.
The notice, however, mentioned personal and family issues as the reason for Kabir’s withdrawal.
On February 6, the authorities appointed Prof Amina Parveen of the Department of Social Work as the new student counselling and guidance director, removing Prof Zahir Uddin Ahmed from the position due to his “sickness”.
Students brought out a procession on the campus on Thursday morning and marked the place with red handprints where police attacked them in front of the IICT building on January 16.
They called for reactivating more than 250 mobile banking accounts of students and withdrawing the two cases against the protesters started by the police.
The students resumed their protests on Wednesday, as their demand for the removal of VC Prof Farid Uddin Ahmed has yet to be met.
The students marched on the campus with placards and photographs of police attacks on the protesters on January 16.
Over two dozen Sust students who had gone on a fast-unto-death ended their week-long hunger strike on January 26. They broke their fast after former Sust teacher Muhammad Zafar Iqbal assured them their demands would be met and offered them water to drink.
