The opposition has begun speaking in the same language as Sheikh Hasina, Local Government, Rural Development and Cooperatives Minister Mirza Fakhrul Islam Alamgir has said.
He made the remarks as chief guest on Sunday afternoon at an event at the Rangpur District Shilpakala Academy, organised by the US-based charity Love Share BD. The event launched the charity’s self-funded “project to make the disadvantaged self-reliant” and handed over 25 tea stalls to 25 disadvantaged people in the Rangpur region.
“We have an opposition. This opposition has, unfortunately, again begun to play the same role as before. They too are speaking in the language Hasina used to speak,” Mirza Fakhrul said, reminding the audience that the government was only four or five months old and had done a great deal in that time.
On the gas crisis, he said the state agency Bapex, which the country uses to extract and search for gas and oil by drilling wells, had been left crippled and had now been revived, and that foreign firms had been invited by tender to explore for gas. On the energy situation, he said oil and gas had to be brought from abroad by ship at a cost of billions of dollars, and that Bangladesh had lost about four billion dollars in payments because of the Iran-United States war, but that no one had gone a single day without oil or gas — supply had fallen, but it was still available.
Outlining a plan to build agriculture-based industry in Rangpur and the north, the minister said the prime minister wanted to set up agro-based industry in the Rangpur division and the northern region to create jobs. On Rangpur’s development, he said: “We people of Rangpur are always left behind. Why left behind? Because we do not understand the right thing. When the BNP comes to government, you back the Jatiya Party; when the BNP comes to government, you back Jamaat. So how will it work? How will you get anything?”
Mirza Fakhrul said the government had established democracy, parliament was functioning, there was freedom to speak and newspapers could now write what they wished, though he questioned the accuracy of information on social media.
Also present were Mushfiqul Fazal Ansari, former Bangladesh ambassador to the United States and now senior secretary at the foreign ministry, Rangpur Development Authority chairman Md Samsuzzaman Samu, Rangpur City Corporation administrator Saiful Islam and Love Share BD director Zahid Khan.
বাংলায় মূল প্রতিবেদন পড়ুন · Read the original Bengali report