Displaced Rohingyas face uncertain future in Bangladesh refugee camps

Agencies
October 10, 2018

Cox's Bazar, Oct 10: With her eyes welling up while narrating her family’s ordeal in Rakhine State in the neighbouring Myanmar, Jamila says the conditions will not be conducive and peaceful for the return of Rohinga refugees to Myanmar.

Speaking before a group of visiting journalists from a number of countries at this refugee camp, Jamila recounted that her husband Abdul Aziz and her teenaged son were killed two years ago in their village in Rakhine State by a marauding team of Myanmar Army.
'They killed my husband and slaughtered my son and destroyed our village Buchidan. I fled with other family members to safety and found shelter in Bangladesh,' Jamila, 35, said.

A similar experience was narrated by Zahid Hussain whose family also fled from Myanmar to avoid bloodshed and conflict. Both of them are among 1.2 million Rohingya refugees who have found shelter in this area of Ukhiya sub-district of Cox’s Bazar coastal district of Bangladesh.

The refugee camps, temporary shelters made of bamboo and tin shades, have sprung up on the entire hill in this sub-district which borders Myanmar. Thirty clusters of such camps are spread over 6,000 acres there. 

'Nearly 80 per cent of the Rohingya refugees have been accommodated in camps here while rest of them are housed in Teknaf which is closer to the border with Myanmar,'’ said Mohd Nikaruzaman, Additional District Commissioner of Ukhiya sub-district.
Rohingya camps are located in hilly forest area , about 40 kms from the city of Cox’s Bazar, and the area, once inhabited by elephant herds and other wild animals, is teeming with blue and green tin roofs, bamboo and tarpaulin sheets and a mud road meandering through the camps.

Mr Nikaruzaman said that Bangladesh provided temporary shelter to fleeing Rohingya refugees on humanitarian grounds and the initial trickle swelled up to a large number last year. He said that total number of Rohingya refugees has gone up to 1.2 million which is four times the total local population of Ukhiya sub-district.

'Recalling difficulties in building settlements for them, he said that health and sanitation were big issues to be tackled. 'We carried out vaccination for cholera and installed deep bore handpumps in clusters for safe drinking water. Toilets and bathrooms were also provided and now we even have a learning centre for children. Food distribution centres have been set up to supply food grains to the families according to their size,’’ he told journalists.

Cox’s Bazar’s District Commissioner Kamal Hussain said that arrival of Rohingyas from Myanmar has now been reduced to a trickle and admitted that it was a very challenging task to provide food, shelter, health and sanitation facilities to them. 'Our Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina extended help on humanitarian grounds and its has been appreciated by the international community,' he said.

The senior official said that a number of global bodies, NGOs, local groups as well as several countries have extended assistance to Rohingyas in terms of medicines, food, clothing and shelter. UN bodies like UNHCR and World Food Programme have played a frontal role in such efforts.

The hilly area where such camps are located have been denuded as forests were cut to accommodate them. Solar lights have been installed at several locations and a 13-km long electricity line is all set to bring power to the camps. Many camps have also got LPG gas cylinders for cooking purposes and small shops have also come up in the area. The officials said that many Rohingyas also helped in the construction of a border road in the area.

Addressing the UN General Assembly’s 73rd session recently, Bangladesh Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina said that she felt the pain and suffering of Rohingyas and called upon international community to give due importance to the atrocities and injustice suffered by Rohingya population in Myanmar.

She said that Rohingyas hosted in Bangladesh were living in an uncertain situation and her country made arrangements for their food, clothing, healthcare, child-care and security. She said the Rohingya crisis originated in Myanmar and its solution has also to be found in Myanmar and added that Bangladesh wanted an early, peaceful solution to the crisis.

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News Network
May 22,2020

Mumbai, May 22: The Reserve Bank of India (RBI) on Friday reduced repo rate by 40 basis points to 4 per cent in an effort to further boost liquidity in the economy which has been reeling under the impact of COVID-19 induced countrywide lockdown.

As a result, the reverse repo rate stands at 3.35 per cent, said RBI Governor Shaktikanta Das. The six-member monetary policy committee (MPC) voted 5:1 in favour of the decision.

Repo rate is the rate at which a country's central bank lends money to commercial banks, and the reverse repo rate is the rate at which it borrows from them. 

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News Network
May 7,2020

United Nations, May 7: An average of 80,000 COVID-19 cases were reported each day in April to the World Health Organization, the top UN health agency has said, noting that South Asian nations like India and Bangladesh are seeing a spike in the infections while the numbers are declining in regions such as Western Europe.

WHO Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said on Wednesday that countries must also be able to manage any risk of the disease being imported into their territories, and communities should be fully educated to adjust to what will be a "new norm".

He said as the countries press forward in the common fight against COVID-19, they should also lay the groundwork for resilient health systems globally.

"More than 3.5 million cases of COVID-19 and almost 250,000 deaths have now been reported to the WHO. Since the beginning of April, an average of around 80,000 new cases have been reported to the WHO every day," Ghebreyesus said in Geneva yesterday.

Asserting that the virus cases were not just numbers, he said: "every single case is a mother, a father, a son, a daughter, a brother, sister or friend".

He said while the numbers are declining in Western Europe, more cases are being reported every day from Eastern Europe, Africa, South-East Asia, the Eastern Mediterranean and the Americas. Even within regions and within countries, there are divergent trends, the agency added.

While some countries are reporting an increase in COVID-19 cases over time, many have seen caseloads rise because they have ramped up testing, the WHO official said.

"We've also seen in Europe and Western Europe a fundamental decrease in the number of cases, but we have seen an associated increase in the number of cases reported in places like the Russian Federation. Southeast, the Western Pacific areas are relatively on the downward trend like Korea and others, but then we do see in South Asia, in places like Bangladesh, in India, some trends towards increase.

"So it's very difficult to say that any particular region is improving or (not improving). There are individual countries within each region that are having difficulties getting on top of this disease and I am particularly concerned about those countries that have (an) ongoing humanitarian crisis," WHO's Executive Director Michael Ryan said.

The death toll due to COVID-19 in India rose to 1,783 while the number of cases climbed to 52,952 on Thursday, registering an increase of 89 deaths and 3,561 cases in the last 24 hours, the Union Health Ministry said.

The number of active COVID-19 cases stood at 35,902 while 15,266 people have recovered, it said.

Noting that while seeing an increase in the number of cases is not good in terms of transmission, WHO's Emerging Diseases and Zoonoses Unit head Maria Van Kerkhove said: "but I don't want to equate that with something (being) wrong".

"I want to equate that with countries are working very hard to increase their ability to find the virus, to find people with the virus, to have testing in place to identify who has COVID-19, and putting into place what they need to do to care for those patients," Kerkhove said.

With more countries considering easing restrictions implemented to curb the spread of the coronavirus, the WHO has again reminded the authorities of the need to maintain vigilance.

"The risk of returning to lockdown remains very real if countries do not manage the transition extremely carefully, and in a phased approach," Ghebreyesus said.

He urged countries to consider the UN agency's six criteria for lifting stay-at-home measures.

That advice includes ensuring surveillance is strong, cases are declining and transmission is controlled. Health systems also must be able to detect, isolate, test and treat cases, and to trace all contacts.

Additionally, the risk of outbreak in settings such as health facilities and nursing homes needs to be minimised, while schools, workplaces and other public locations should have preventive measures in place.

"The COVID-19 pandemic will eventually recede, but there can be no going back to business as usual. We cannot continue to rush to fund panic but let preparedness go by the wayside," he said.

He said the crisis has highlighted the importance of strong national health systems as the foundation of global health security: not only against pandemics but also against the multitude of health threats that people across the world face every day.

"If we learn anything from COVID-19, it must be that investing in health now will save lives later," Ghebreyesus said.

While the world currently spends around USD 7.5 trillion on health annually, the WHO believes the best investments are in promoting health and preventing disease.

"Prevention is not only better than cure, it's cheaper, and the smartest thing to do," he said.

The deadly coronavirus, which originated from the Chinese city of Wuhan in December last year, has infected over 3.7 million people and killed 263,831 people globally, according to a tally by Johns Hopkins University.

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Agencies
March 14,2020

New Delhi, Mar 14: Excise duty on petrol and diesel was on Saturday hiked by ₹3 per litre as the government looked to mop up gains arising from fall in international oil prices.

Special excise duty on petrol was hiked by ₹2 to ₹8 per litre incase of petrol and to Rs 4 incase of diesel, an official notification said.

Additionally, road cess on petrol was raised by ₹1 per litre each on petrol and diesel to ₹10.

The increase in excise duty would in normal course result in a hike in petrol and diesel prices but most of it would be adjusted against the fall in rates that would have necessitated because of slump in international oil prices.

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