BUS231(Section-7) Business Communication Syed Tanvir Ahmed , 2009-2-30-067 Journal-1, November 28 , 2012

AUTOCRACY CREATS WATERSIDE GROUP TROUBL Ahmed Karim was the Managing Director of Watersid and he was an Australian citizen of Noakhali origin . In Bangladesh, he realized there was more demand for consulting services for students. By February 1998 he revamped the business and changed the focus of the business to a new area-student counseling and grooming, offering various types of services to students who wanted to study in Australia. The name Waterside Consulting Group became slightly misleading to a lot of people who though that it was part of some similarly named big consulting firm in Australia. Waterside Group was basically to help students fill up their application forms . The specialty of the service was that if the visa was not attained the money would be refundable. Waterside began to operate outside Dhaka as well through agents in Noakhali and Barisal. Mr. Karim also stated working in Western international university as a faculty member in the business department. Mr. Tareq Rahman was one of the popular teachers at Westin. He was well qualified with several degrees, many scholarships during his studies. Mr. Karim and Mr. Rahman soon became good friend and Mr. Karim asked Mr.Rahman to join his firm as executive director. Mr. Rahman would be given the Training and Management Consulting unit of the business to look after. The organizational culture at the firm was very informal and laid back. The fact that the majority of the employees had a common background and atmosphere was always fun-filled, cracking of jokes birthdays being celebrated. The structure of the organization was also highly unstructured and organic . Mr. Karim took many important decisions by himself. The laid back approach carried over into the finances of the company as well. Ms. Jane Doherty had been hired to see if the organization structure could be improved. However, she did not have the full cooperation of the staff in her efforts. By this time customers for the student counseling business were increasing by huge numbers every month. In February 2002 trouble started customer coming and demanding their money back as a result of not having got any visa and admission into any university . Investigation led to the fact that the agents there had been taking on additional customers without even informing the head office in Dhaka. Karim once again decided to take action single handedly . For quite a while Tareq had had a personal vision. He wanted to build something to help the youth of the country. He wanted to offer underprivileged youths a way of doing well just like he had done. So he had set up a Youth Development forum, which he registered under the Societys Registration Act as a Not-Profit Organization. However, he also valued his friendship with Karim . He did not want to leave him in the lurch. Mr. Tareq Rahman wondering what to do about the protesters shouting slogans outside . Mr. Rahman finished calculating the loss Waterside would have to incur in order to satisfy these protesters and stop them from further bringing down the name of Waterside.
Source :SEDF-CBDS, Bangladesh Runana Liza Anam , October 18, 2003