State Minister for Shipping KhalidMahmud Chowdhury expressed his optimism that country would witness a green revolution through the plantation of one crore tree saplings campaign during the ongoing Mujib Year marking the birth centenary celebration of Bangabandhu.
“After her return to homeland in 1981, Sheikh Hasina used to carry out plantation of tree saplings programme throughout three months of monsoon every year through Krishak League since 1984 and this initiative is still continuing,” he said.
The state minister said this on Tuesday while talking to journalists after joining a tree sapling plantation programme on Jatiya Sangsad (JS) premises marking Mujib Year.
On July 26 last, JS Speaker Dr Shirin Sharmin inaugurated a programme to plant 350 to 500 saplings of different species of trees including forest, fruit-bearing and medicinal plants on the parliament premises under the initiative of the JS marking the birth centenary of Father of the Nation Bangabandhu Sheikh Mujibur Rahman. Khalid, also an Awami League lawmaker, said August is a month of mourning as the architect of independent Bangladesh was brutally assassinated along with his most of his family members on that soil on August 15, 1975 when child, woman and even expecting mother did not get escaped from deaths in the massacre.
He said the changes have been brought to programme scheduled for Bangabandhu’s birth centenary in the wake of coronavirus pandemic but the prime minister’s announced countrywide tree plantation programme is going on.
Responding to the call of the premier, one crore saplings will be planted across the country, he said, adding that Bangabandhu had given a shape of political movement to tree plantation campaign.
Following his footprints, his able daughter Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina carried out the programme every year so that she has been acknowledged as an eco-friendly statesman in the world, he said. The AL lawmaker said no other political party in the world holds tree plantation programme in that way.
Mentioning that Bangabandhu wanted to build ‘Sonar Bangla’ with nature and people, the state minister said Father of the Nation turned the Racecourse ground into a park having natural and aesthetic beauty. Bangabandhu gifted the city dwellers a park to spend their leisure with the natural beauty in a healthy environment, he said, adding that the architect of independent Bangladesh had taken initiatives to plant saplings at costal belts and areas of the world’s largest mangrove forest the Sundarbans which today safeguards people as shield from natural calamities.
Former State Minister Narayan Chandra Chanda, MP, Whip Mahbub Ara Begum Gini, Nadira Sultana, MP, and JS Secretariat Additional Secretary Md Nuruzzaman were present, among others.
