Special Correspondent :
Prime Minister’s Office (PMO) has asked the Finance Ministry to release Tk 200 crore more for building Rohingya shelters at Bhashan Char of Hatiya upazila in Noakhali.
PMO, in a letter on Tuesday, instructed the finance division to take necessary steps to release the fund kept in the budget for the current fiscal year.
“The office of the Ashrayan Project-3 under the PMO has sought the fund from the Ministry for speedy implementation of the project,” a senior Finance Ministry official told The New Nation yesterday.
He said the Bhashan Char project initially received Tk 1,500 crore allocation as a project as part of Annual Development Programme (ADP) in the current fiscal year’s budget. But the allocation increased in the revised ADP to Tk 1,898.45 crore for speedy implementation of the project.
The Finance Ministry has already released a total of Tk 1,461 under the project. The amount has already been spent. Out of the total fund allocated in the ADP, an amount of Tk 437 crore still remained unutilised. The PMO sought Tk 200 crore more fund from the remaining portion.
“The fund will be released as soon as possible,” said the Finance Ministry official.
Officials related to budget formulation said the government is likely to propose Tk 2,000 crore allocation in the upcoming budget for executing the project, which the Executive Committee of the National Economic Council (ECNEC) approved in November last at an estimated cost of Tk 2,312.15 crore. Apart from building necessary infrastructure and temporary housing facilities for the displaced Myanmar citizens, the low-lying areas of the island will be filled in and embankments would be erected around the entire perameter to ensure it can resist tidal flooding, monsoon storms and seasonal cyclones.
Officials of Disaster Management and Relief Ministry said the rehabilitation work for relocating 100,000 displaced Rohingyas is going on in full swing at Bhashan Char. Almost 50 percent of the construction works of 1,440 houses including 120 cyclone shelters has already been completed. “The government is serious to implement the Bhashan Char project in time so that Rohingya refugees vulnerable to landslides and flash floods in Cox’s Bazar’s makeshift camps can be relocated there as soon as possible. We hope to relocate the refugees by August this year,” Senior Secretary, Ministry of Disaster Management and Relief, Md Shah Kamal told The New Nation yesterday.
UN agencies earlier warned that more 100,000 Rohingya refugees face life-threatening risks from floods and landslides as the monsoon season approaches.
“We have already relocated 15,000 Rohingyas who were most vulnerable to flood and landslides to a new site in Cox’s Bazar,” Refugee Relief and Repatriation Commissioner Abul Kalam told The New Nation.
He said the government agencies are working hard to relocate all the vulnerable refugees to Bhashan Char before the monsoon starts. “We are taking the UN alerts seriously.”
Bangladesh is now hosting more than one million Rohingyas who are now living in camps in border district Cox’s Bazar. Of them, about 655,000, according to an UN estimate, have entered the country since August 25, when the Myanmar military launched a violent crackdown in Rakhine State following attacks by Rohingya militant. The huge Rohingya influx has created immense social and economic problem for Bangladesh.
