Employees of Islami Bank have staged a blockade on the Dhaka–Chattogram Highway at Faujdarhat, halting traffic for nearly an hour in protest against the bank's “special competency evaluation” programme. Witnesses said that around 12pm, over a thousand male and female Islami Bank employees sat down on the highway and began chanting slogans, bringing traffic on both sides of the highway to a standstill and causing long tailbacks. At Friday’s press conference, Islami Bank officials expressed fears of dismissal under the current management. Branding the current Islami Bank management board “illegal”, protest leader SM Emdad Hossain alleged that employees from Chattogram were being subjected to discrimination. Following a shift in the country’s political landscape, Islami Bank was freed from the control of the controversial S Alam Group.
