Take steps to rehabilitate 10m flood-hit coastal people

Nineteen rights organisations have urged the government and NGOs to consider short and long term relief and rehabilitation measures for around 10 million coastal poor people affected by recent unusual tidal flood. They also called for scrapping the monopoly of Water Development Board (WDB) over embankment construction and maintenance, saying the WDB must be decentralised and locally accountable to the people as well as the embankment construction and maintenance should be public participatory entrepreneurship consisting government, non-governmental, academic and professional associations. They raised the demands at a programme in the city on Monday, according to a news agency.