BNP talks tough against utility price increase

Bangladesh Nationalist Party on Tuesday said that people’s movement would wash away the government if the government’s decision of hiking power and water prices were not withdrawn.

The party secretary general Mirza Fakhruls Islam Alamgir made the comment while addressing a human chain formed by the party in front of the National Press Club in the capital protesting against the increase of hiking utility prices.

Several hundred BNP leaders and activists joined the demo and chanted slogans against the government and the utility price hike and demanding release of  the party chairperson Khaleda Zia.

The government on February 27 increased the average retail price of electricity by 5.3 per cent that came into effect on March 1 and hiked the water price in Dhaka city on February 28 by 24.98 percent, effective from April 1.

‘We ask the government to withdraw the hiked prices of water, power and gas. Otherwise, people’s movement will wash the government away,’ Fakhrul said.

During the tenure of this government, he said, water prices were as increased 10 times and power prices eight times.

The government is increasing power prices to take money from people’s pockets and pay the subsidy with it to quick rental power plants through which the government looted people’s money, he said.

He said that the utility price hike would push the low and middle income group people into utter helplessness when commodity prices were increasing.

Terming the government as submissive and a puppet one, Fakhrul said that the government was terming the incidents involving Indian Citizenship Amendment Act and their National Register of Citizenship as India’s internal matter when the Indian ministers were saying that they would send back ‘illegal’ Bangladeshis to Bangladesh.

He said that the government had destroyed Bangladesh’s foreign policy and could neither solve water share issues with India and Rohingya crisis nor could stop border killings.

Fakhrul said that the government had destroyed the country’s banking sector, economy, education and healthcare system and all the democratic institutions to establish a one party autocratic rule.

He said that the government compelled Bangabandhu Sheikh Mujib Medical University physicians involved in treatment of Khaleda Zia not to provide accurate report about her health to the High Court.

Fakhrul said that it was unfortunate that the judiciary could not judge properly as the state was governed by autocrats and the system was fascist.

Presided over by BNP Dhaka south city president and central joint secretary general Habib-un-Nabi Khan Sohel, the human chain was addressed by standing committee members Abdul Moyeen Khan and Selima Rahman and central leaders AZM Zahid Hossain and Habibur Rahman Habib.

News Courtesy: www.newagebd.net