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According to newspaper reports, Dr. Yunus, during his Middle East tour met Sheikh Nahayan Mabarak Al Nahayan, the owner of Dhabi group and proposed him to set up a world-class medical college hospital in Bangladesh. Yunus even proposed the name of the hospital as ‘Nahayan-Yunus Medical College Hospital’.

Many of the Bangladeshi intellectuals are raising eye borrows at such a shameless attitude of the Nobel Laureate, who is continuing to expose a face of ‘fame monger’.

But, there is other side of the coin. Extremely interesting stories about Yunus’s Abu Dhabi tour is gradually coming out. It is learnt from various sources that, main reason of Dr. Yunus’ tour was to reach into a kind of secret understanding with Dhabi Group, which is set to introduce cell phone services in Bangladesh under title ‘Warid Telecom’, for not reducing call rates too much nor to offer shares of the company in the Bangladesh share market.

Dr. Yunus has also special assignment from other cell phone operators in Bangladesh to convince the Arab Sheikh is joining the Cell-Phone Operators Syndicate in keeping the call charges to certain level (at least above TK 1 per minute), so that they will be able to continue their most profitable business without any tough competition. On the other hand, Dr. Yunus might have also given an idea to the policy makers of Warid Telecom about evading value added tax and income tax. It may be mentioned here that, cell phone operators in Bangladesh are reportedly evading billions of Taka each year. According to figure, only Grameen Phone has a total number of over 20 million subscribers. Since introduction of ‘Pre-paid phone service’, the company has been charging TK. 7 on every minute of outgoing call. On the other hand, the company has deducted value added tax and other taxes from the customers. In this case, Grameen Phone has collected a few billion of Taka from the customers as VAT, which they did not finally pay to the national exchequer. Same thing is happening with other cell phone operators like Aktel, Banglalink and Citycell.

It was reported in the press that Warid Telecom is planning to charge less than TK. 1 for each minute outgoing call, when their services will commence in Bangladesh. On the other hand, a number of applications for establishing cell phone services are pending with the government. But, the well-organized syndicate of the existing cell phone operators are doing everything to either delay or sabotage all new comers in the business. When they are seeing that, it was impossible for them to stop Warid Telecom, top management of the Cell Phone Syndicate assigned Dr. Yunus to visit Abu Dhabi and have secret meeting with the owners of Dhabi Group in order to ensure that this new comer does not introduce any ‘revolutionary’ rate, which might force all other mobile phone companies in reducing their existing rates.

It is important to recall that the Nobel laureate’s Grameen Phone was charging TK. 7 per minute from each its customers, till former Sheba Telecom was bought by Orasscom and a revolutionary rate was introduced by Banglalink. But, by that time Dr. Yunus and his Norwegian partners have virtually looted the Bangladeshi customers by cashing billions of Taka each month from the highest call rate in the world.

According to several statistics, cell phone operators in Bangladesh are still charging highest rates in comparing to other cell phone services even in the rich countries. On the other hand, the Bangladesh cell phone companies are virtually cheating the customers with their word called ‘Post-Paid’ and ‘Pre-Paid’. Although in both cases, the customers are required to pay their call charges well in advance, the cell phone operators are still charging a monthly line rent on each of the so-called Post-Paid phone.