Staff Reporter:
Chief Adviser to the interim government Professor Dr Muhammad Yunus yesterday urged the country’s people to come forward to address the ongoing devastating floods.
“With the initiatives and encouragement of the youth, the country’s people should jump into addressing the flood together. We must tackle the flood by united efforts,” he said after a meeting with the repre-sentatives of non-government organizations (NGOs) at the state guest house Jamuna in the capital.
Briefing reporters in front of the Jamuna, chief adviser’s press secretary Shafiqul Alam said Prof Yunus was surprised seeing that people from all works of life have come forward to help the flood victims.
“The way the people of Bangladesh showed their spirit during the student-people movement, they are coming up showing the same spontaneity in addressing the flood,” he said quoted the chief adviser as saying.
He said about 44 NGOs were invited to join the meeting and a fruitful and cordial meeting was held yes-terday.
During the meeting, Prof Yunus asked the NGOs to conduct relief distribution and flood mitigation pro-grammes in a coordinated way, the press secretary said.
He said many people have already lost their houses, while all belongs, including utensils, of many were washed away.
“The floodwater has started receding. After the flood, water-borne diseases and health related issues emerge. During the meeting, they discussed how these issues can be addressed,” Alam said.
About relief programme, he said people are collecting relief at village level and yesterday (Friday) stu-dents collected a huge amount of relief at TSC of Dhaka University, which was a remarkable scene.
On communication, he said, the government continues coordination with army and mobile phone com-panies to reconnect communication system at flood-hit areas.
“We are trying to make mobile towers operational by sending diesel oil there and resume power connec-tivity as soon as possible. If electricity connection resumes, mobile phone service will be operational. And once mobile network resumes, people living in flood-affected areas will be able to set up a direct communication with diaspora…relief and rehabilitation has already started,” Alam said.
Replying to a question, he said Prof Yunus said NGOs are the strength of Bangladesh and “We must im-plement the dream the youth have shown us. And we can do it”.
