While Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina has failed to resolve the outstanding issues including the very crucial Tista water sharing deal during her visit to India, she and her Indian counterpart Narendra Modi inaugurated Unit-I of Maitree Power Plant, a 1320MW supercritical coal-fired thermal power plant at Rampal, Khulna, ignoring local and international protest. By doing this, they have ignored people’s legitimate environmental concerns.
Since this environmentally controversial project started in July 2016, it drew huge criticism nationally and internationally. The UNESCO, that declared the Sunderbans a heritage site, many environmental organisations, experts as well as media justifiably called for stopping the work for the plant.
India’s environmental experts as well as a cross section of people also protested the Rampal power plant project for environmental concerns. But the governments of both Bangladesh and India went ahead with the project despite the fact that Bangladesh is one of the most vulnerable countries of the world to the impact of climate change.
The world’s largest mangrove forest indeed acts in balancing the ecology of relevant areas in many ways in the Southern part of the country. Now the power plant will harm the forest, and by harming the forest, it will harm the country and our existence.
We pointed out time and again that Bangladesh is a power-starved country, but this does not necessarily mean that we have to aggressively establish a coal-based power plant at Rampal inviting risks to our environment. Coal emits poisonous carbon dioxide, nitrogen and sulphur greatly harming the environment. The liquid wastes from a power plant and the gases can potentially cause great harm to the forest which is totally undesirable.
It was also suggested that if the country really needed a coal-based plant for power generation the government could very well choose a different site that would not harm this forest and its valuable flora and fauna. But all went in vain.
Bangladesh Prime Minister’s four-day visit to India is coming to an end today (Thursday), but we have not heard, as yet, anything worthwhile from her visit to India for Bangladesh except seven Memorandums of Understandings (MoUs) that do not have great bearing for the people of Bangladesh. Still, among these MoUs, one involves Kushiyara water withdrawal. The grid connectivity with Nepal and Bhutan for electricity import has also remained undecided.
So, why is this high profile visit spending huge taxpayer’s money when these MoUs could be signed by the officials of the Bangladesh mission in India?
