NGO alliance for increased allocation in budget

The alliance of coastal NGOs has strongly demanded of the government to increase budgetary allocation for the disaster-driven people and construction of embankments and mobilising emergency resources to save the inhabitants from the imminent catastrophe.
The rights-based organisation made the demand at a press conference held at the National Press Club Tuesday. Among others, alliance leader Rezaul Karim Chowdhury, Shakat Ali Tutul, Alauddin Shikdar, Shabnam Hafiz, Masud Alam and Badrul Alam spoke at the press briefing.
They said almost 35 million coastal people are exposed to danger because of inadequate protection, resulting in massive migration from the risky zones to the big cities like Dhaka and Chittagong.
On behalf of the alliance, Shakat Ali Tutul placed an 8-point demand including emergency and short term allocations for the disaster-prone regions to repair and rebuild the embankments during the Fiscal Year (FY) 2014-15.
The demands also include long-term allocations to build permanent and sustainable embankments and ensuring transparency in the related offices like Bangladesh Water Development Board (BWDB), ensuring transparency in the tender system, deployment of Army personnel in urgent needs, encouraging people's participation in the project implementation, complaint management, the pro-people attitude of the BWDB and other public institutions and make them answerable to the local government.
Alauddin Shikdar said the agricultural sector would be the worst hit if the land keeps being eroded and finally the nation would lose the much-desired food security. Shabnam Hafiz said the government frequently provided the tax exemption facilities to rich people but the cost for building embankment to save 35 million coastal and poverty- driven people was considered as a burden.
Badrul Alam said: "We should not depend on the foreign aid for embankment construction, rather we should do it with our own resources as hard conditions are laid with the foreign aid to serve interest of the aid providers.
Rezaul Karim Chowdhury said the country could use the army personnel in construction of embankments as the engineering corps of Bangladesh Army proved their ability by working on the Sirajganj Town Protection Embankment and the Marine Drive in Cox's Bazar.