The Unsung Heroes

Photos: Kazi Tahsin Agaz Apurbo

It is 5 o'clock in the morning. The first light of dawn is still far from the Dhaka sky. Defying the dense fog and a chilly 10 degrees centigrade temperature, some shadowy figures mounted on bicycles start to appear in one of the alleys of Dhaka city. Their bicycles, loaded with piles of packages neatly covered with plastic sheets, will raise the curiosity of many if anyone is left to see them at this hour in such harsh weather.

Their cargo, which they have carried with so much care and caution, are thousands of copies of newspapers, to be specific, The Daily Star, the most widely-circulated English newspaper in Bangladesh. Every day, thousands of workers with their bicycles spread out all over the country with copies of The Daily Star confronting unfavourable weather, taking extreme security risks and sacrificing time with their families.

Md Suruj Mia, a young man of 23 years says, "In the Elephant road area of Dhaka, we, a team of twenty hawkers, are assigned to provide newspapers to hundreds of homes and offices. We collect the newspapers from the distributor everyday at 5 am, one amongst the eighty-five centres for newspaper collection in Dhaka city alone."

Thanks to these dedicated workers, everyday more than sixty five thousand readers all over the country get their copy of The Daily Star on time. Masud Bulbul, the circulation manager of The Daily Star says, "The circulation team ensures that all the newspapers will be reached to these hawkers working in all the districts and Upazilas of Bangladesh with full punctuality."

"Under any circumstance, whether political unrest or natural calamities, our vehicles reach every district from Teknaf to Tetulia and provide the hawkers with the newspapers before sunrise so that they can reach the readers on time," he adds.

However, before taking the newspapers to this massive chain of distribution, there is another mammoth task. It is the printing of hundreds and thousands of copies of The Daily Star which also happens behind the curtains, hidden from the outside world.

The process starts by sending all the content of the next day's newspaper to the "Computer to Press (CTP) Section" located at the printing house. In this section, a team of skilled technicians produce "plates" with the help of a CTP machine which is actually imprinting the content on aluminium plates with accurate design and colour tone.

"Although this machine has made the task easier, we must still be very careful about colour correction," says Md. Nazimuddin, a technician who has been in this profession for 17 years.

These plates are finally transferred to the printing section for final publication. Seven huge Web printing machines, drinking up tons of blue, black, yellow and magenta (CMYK) inks, transfer the content of those plates to the newsprint papers and produce around one hundred thousand copies of The Daily Star every day. A team of two hundred skilled workers remain constantly alert to register the perfect colour-setting of the machine, to ensure constant supply of paper, ink and other material.

Selim S H Chowdhury, Manager, Production and Events, The Daily Star says, "The printing of the next day's newspaper starts from 11 pm, the previous night, and continues till 5 am in the morning. All the workers of the press spend sleepless nights to ensure flawless and high quality publication for our readers.

"Without their dedication and skills, it would be impossible for us to maintain such perfection in quality for all these years", he adds."

When we open up the pages of our favourite newspaper and read reports with by-lines of the renowned reporters, none of us can feel the sacrifice and struggle of these workers behind the scene who spend sleepless nights with gigantic machines and chemicals to publish the newspapers and who risk their lives to reach the newspapers to us. Because, their names are nowhere in the paper and their stories are never told. Yet, the printing machines will continue to run on their toil every night and we will be getting the newspapers every morning, right on time, thanks to these true unsung heroes of The Daily Star.