Lawmakers elected from Bangladesh’s coastal districts and development activists on Sunday urged the government for keeping special allocation in the national budget for 2021-22 for construction of sustainable embankments to save lives and livelihood of the people of the country’s coastal belt. They made the demand in a special convention organized by Faith in Action and Leaders, a non-governmental development organisation, and civil society platform Sundarbans and Coastal Protection Movement at the Krishibid Institution auditorium in Dhaka on Sunday. Addressing the convention as the chair, ruling Awami League lawmaker from Khulna-6 constituency, Akhtaruzzaman Babu, said that the government was conducting different development activities in the coastal areas but the people had to suffer immensely as the had to become waterlogged even in high tide water. He said that the embankments were, at places, weak and they often breach during natural disaster and even due to pressure of water during high tide.
Speakers in the event urged the government to raise special funds for maintenance of the embankments and including people’s representatives in implementing any development projects. They stressed the need of transparency and accountability in the implementation of the projects and to take short, mid and long term plans to protect the lives, livelihoods and nature in the coastal areas by declaring the area as disaster prone areas. Lawmakers Mir Mostaq Ahmed Robi, Mustafa Lutfullah, Abdus Salam Murshidy, Md Amirul Alam Milon, SM Shahzada, Syeda Rubina Akhter and Gloria Jharna Sarkar, among others, spoke in the convention conducted by Sundarbans and Coastal Protection Movement coordinator Nikhil Chandra Bhadra. Former ministers and AL lawmakers – Narayan Chandra Chandra and AFM Ruhul Huq joined the convention. Leaders executive director Mohan Kumar Mondol presented the keynote paper in the convention.
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