National Committee to Protect Oil-Gas and Power-Port in a statement today (Monday) urged the people to resist the move for setting up coal-fired power plant under India-Bangladesh joint venture at Rampal, a location close to the Sundarbans mangrove forest.
The statement, signed by its convenor Engr Shiekh Mohammad Shahidullah and member secretary Prof Anu Muhammad, said that the proposed 1320 MW power plant project, for which Bangladesh and India signed a joint venture agreement on April 20, has created strong ground for a `great natural disaster’ in Bangladesh.
It said: “Through signing the agreement violating international norms, the two nations made all the final arrangements to destroy the world’s largest mangrove forest, Sundarbans which is a unique place of biodiversity and also the natural shield against natural disaster.”
Protesting the agreement, the statement further said that it offered all facilities to ensure high profit for the Indian company through giving tax waiver, setting no power tariff and passing over all responsibilities on Bangladesh.
The two leaders mentioned that experts of Khulna University and Bangladesh Agriculture University through two independent studies have cautioned about the enormity of the impending disaster. But the government, they said grabbed lands of the local people for the project defying the experts’ opinion and without doing any real environment impact assessment (EIA).
The experts at a recent review meeting on EIA at the Power Ministry rejected the EIA report and demanded a fresh EIA, the statement added.
Source: UNB Connect
