Bangladesh plans to relocate 100,000 Rohingya refugees to an uninhabited island, an undertaking that does not yet have a timeline, a state minister said.
The minister of state for foreign affairs, Mohammed Shahriar Alam, told, on Friday that Bangladesh was paying $280 million to build residences and fortify the muddy island in the Bay of Bengal from cyclones, and that is the reason of request for international funds.
Around 700,000 Rohingya Muslims passed the border from Myanmar’s Rakhine state since August, and are placed in camps at Cox’s Bazar due to a repatriation deal between the neighboring countries has been delayed, Bangladesh in the preparation to build up new houses on the nearby island, called Bhasan Char, before the start of seasonal monsoon rains in late April.
“We don’t have a timeline because it’s a lot of money,” Alam said at Bangladesh’s United Nations office in New York. “We are so far building it with our own finances. I am not very hopeful about how much funds the international community will be able to raise.”
The latest wave arrival of refugees joined about 300,000 Rohingya already in Bangladesh, one of the world’s poorest and most crowded countries, who fled previous bouts of violence. A UN coordination branch has separately requested $951 million for immediate relief of the refugee situation.
Post Your Comments