PM calls upon UNDP to raise more funds for Rohingya

Dhaka Tribune (Bangladesh), March 18, 2024

Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina on Monday urged the United Nations Development Program (UNDP) to make an effort to raise a larger international funds for the support of the Rohingya people.

She made the call at a meeting with the visiting UNDP goodwill ambassador and Crown Princess of Sweden Victoria at a city hotel here.

PM’s speech writer Md Nazrul Islam briefed reporters after the meeting.

The prime minister said Bangladesh had given shelter to forcibly displaced Rohingyas from Myanmar on humanitarian grounds and arranged improved accommodation for them in Bhashanchar, ensuring many facilities for them. Now some one lakh Rohingya can reside there in Bhashanchar, she added.

She sought assistance from the UNDP to relocate more Rohingyas to Bhashanchar.

Princess Victoria arrived in Dhaka on Monday on a four-day visit to Bangladesh during which she will tour Rohingya camps in Cox’s Bazar and Bhashanchar.

Bilateral and multilateral issues including climate change came up for discussion during the meeting with the PM.

The princes said there is a huge scope to deepen the bilateral relations between Sweden and Bangladesh.

She expressed her optimism for strengthening the bilateral ties between the two countries specially in trade, business and investment.

The Bangladesh prime minister urged the Swedish businesses to make investment in Bangladesh particularly in special economic zones.

The PM said Bangladesh is one of the worst victims of climate change. Bangladesh’s contribution to carbon emission is negligible but the country is badly affected. Bangladesh faces different natural calamities like floods and cyclones due to climate changes, she said.

About the local climate adaptation and mitigation programs, she said Bangladesh formed a climate trust fund to protect the local community and their livelihood.

The PM said her government’s main goal is poverty alleviation as it has already reduced the poverty rate to 18.7% from 41% and the extreme poverty rate to 5.6% from 25.1%.

She said the government has been providing homeless people with free cyclone-resistant houses throughout the country so that there will be no homeless people in Bangladesh

She said her government constructed cyclone shelter centres on the coastal areas.

Sheikh Hasina recalled her first visit to Sweden in 1969 when her husband was there for study.