People asked to deposit donations in govt fund [ Tritiyo Matra News ]

People asked to deposit donations in govt fund

Local December 14, 2016

The government has decided to accept donations from philanthropists who want to help Rohingya refugees recently entered the country fleeing Myanmar military crackdown on the ethnic minority community in Rakhine state.
‘We are requesting philanthropists to deposit their donations to us…We will have it distributed among the Rohingya refugees who are in need of help,’ Cox’s Bazar’s deputy commissioner Ali Hossain told New Age on Tuesday.
The refugees, however, have no reason to be cheerful about the decision as it may take days, if not weeks, for them to get the assistance from individual philanthropists via the official channel.
‘We will not allow any philanthropists to distribute relief on the field,’ Ali Hossain said.
Although Rohingya refugees continued to enter the country for two months, the district administration was yet to work out a process for relief distribution.
Although the deputy commissioner was hopeful that a committee would be formed in the next few days for doing the task, he did not get any instruction from the cabinet whether a list of the newcomers should be prepared for the distribution.
Local people continued demanding enlistment of the refugees who were desperate to find shelter and food after entering Bangladesh. They feared that the need to survive might lead refugees to travel across the district, even across the country, and it would be impossible to identify them later.
‘If the refugees are not identified and listed, how the government expects to distribute relief among them,’ wondered a Rohingya refugee leader.
‘I doubt the government’s intention,’ he added.
As the news of a possible relief distribution spread among the refugees, many gathered at the Leda makeshift camp on Tuesday.
Refugees who did not find a place in the camp rushed to the Rohingya leaders at the camp for having their names listed in the unofficial data being kept by the leaders.
Nur Alam, 50, and his brother Shamsul Alam, 40, were seen requesting the Leda camp leaders for including them on the list of refugees living at the camp. They entered Bangladesh Tuesday and took shelter at a village outside the camp.
‘We have to live on the courtyard of a house at the village as we have not found a place at the camp and now we will not get help for not living at the camp,’ said Nur Alam after failing to put his name on the list.
The Rohingya leaders said that they could not include anyone on their list if he or she was not living at the camp.
Over 5,000 Rohingyas have already taken shelter at the Leda camp after entering. The camp was filled to the brim and had no space for hosting more refugees.
The International Organisation for Migration has said that over 21,000 Rohingya refugees have taken refuge in Bangladesh since Myanmar military launched military crackdown on Rohingyas in early October.
The refugees, mostly women and children, were now starving as they had to leave everything behind in the wake of the latest violence in Myanmar.
According to Rohingya leaders at Leda camp, the World Food Programme was also working to prepare a list for opening a food distribution programme there.