The National Committee for Protection of Oil, Gas, Mineral Resource, Power and Ports (Oil-Gas Committee) on Wednesday urged Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina and her Indian counterpart Narendra Modi to jointly announce the termination of Rampal power plant.The national committee came up with the call at a press conference titled ‘Indian Prime Minister’s Visit, World Environment Day and the Project Destroying the Sundarbans’, held at the city’s Mukti Bhaban.Reading out a written statement, Oil-Gas Committee member secretary Prof Anu Mohammad said the government is not stepping back from the decision to build the India-Bangladesh joint venture Rampal coal-fired power plant despiteprotests by people as well as experts from home and abroad. Referring to a 2014 monitoring report by the Centre for Environmental and Geographic Information Services, he said the government has even failed to control the contamination during the preparatory works for the power plant.The government has failed to control dust pollution during earth filling, sound pollution and black fume emission during dredging, affecting the fisheries, he said quoting the monitoring report.He also said, National Thermal Power Corporation (NTPC) of India could not build any power plant within 25 kilometers of a forest in its own country, but Bangladesh has allowed NTPC to construct a power plant within 14 kilometers of the Sundarbans.Anu Mohammad urged the two Prime Ministers of Bangladesh and India to come up with an announcement to terminate the Rampal Power Plant project and rather take a project to enrich the Sundarbans that is located in both countries. Oil-Gas committee convener Engineer Sheikh Muhammad Shaidullah, CPB leader Ruhin Hossain Prince, Bangladesher Samajtantrik Dal (BSD) leader Bazlur Rashid Firoz, and Prof Tanjim Uddin Khan were also present at the press conference.
