Govt directs ministry to begin process before rainy season

The Cabinet Division has directed the Ministry of Disaster Management to take measures to relocate Rohingyas from Cox's Bazar to "Safe Zone" immediately as they are facing grave risks to their lives and health in view of the coming rainy season.
Analyzing the snail pace of the repatriation process of Rohingyas to their homeland, the Cabinet Division has accepted the UN reports that said that more than 100,000 Rohingya refugees huddled in squalid, muddy camps in Bangladesh will be in grave danger from landslides when the mid-year monsoon season begins.
On January 16, Bangladesh and Myanmar signed a document on 'Physical Arrangement,' which will facilitate the return of Rohingyas to their homeland from Bangladesh but there is no significant progress in their repatriation.
The 'Physical Arrangement'     stipulates that the repatriation will be completed preferably within two years from the start of the repatriation process.
 "Following the Cabinet meeting, a directive has been served to the all ministries concerned recently that urged the District Commissioners to take measures soon," a senior official of the Cabinet Division told the Daily observer on Saturday.
Earlier, the UN humanitarian report said the lack of space remains the main challenge for the sector as sites are highly congested leading to extremely hard living conditions with no space for service provisions and facilities.
Meanwhile, the government is planning to shift the Rohingyas to Vashan Char, a remote island in the Bay of Bengal.
"The Rohingya populations are settled in an area that is prone to cyclone, and a terrain that would be flooded as soon as rains begin, now we are thinking to shift them to Vashan Char, however, it needed around US$28 crore for the rehabilitation," State Minister for Foreign Affairs said.
He said Bangladesh is yet to get any response from the donors in connection with the Vashan Char project, however, he said that the Rohingya problem in its humanitarian and human rights aspects is going to get prominence in the OIC Summit in Dhaka.
"There will be a separate sideline session on the humanitarian challenges of the Muslim world with special focus on the Rohingyas on May 6, and prior to that a visit to the Rohingya makeshift camps in Cox's Bazar will take place on May 4.
He said that no single agency or the government of Bangladesh alone can meet the massive needs of such a large population group of 1.3 million Rohingyas in Cox's Bazar.
UN agencies and NGO partners on March 17 released the 2018 Joint Response Plan (JRP) for the Rohingya Humanitarian Crisis, a US$951 million appeal to meet the urgent needs of nearly 1 million Rohingyas and more than 330,000 vulnerable Bangladeshis in the communities hosting them.
So far, the emergency response from September 2017 to February 2018 has received 74 per cent of the funding needed ($321 million of the $434 million required).