ZCZC
BSS-27
HASAN-BULBUL-PM LEAD
PM spends sleepless night to monitor cyclone: Dr Hasan
DHAKA, Nov 10, 2019 (BSS) – Information Minister and Awami League Publicity and Publication Secretary Dr Hasan Mahmud today said Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina has spent a sleepless night to monitor super cyclone ‘Bulbul’.
“Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina time and again gave directives to tackle the cyclonic storm and she spent a sleepless night,” he told a discussion marking the Shaheed Nur Hossain Day at the office of Dhaka City South AL at Bangabandhu Avenue here.
Shaheed Nur Hossain Sangsad arranged the discussion.
The minister said the government took massive preparations to face the cyclonic storm. “That’s why lives and property of the coastal people got protected from the havoc,” he said.
Castigating the BNP leaders for dubbing the government preparations to tackle the cyclone as ‘insufficient’, Dr Hasan Mahmud asked them to see their own face in mirror before criticizing the government.
During the BNP tenure, he said, “five lakh people died and there was massive loss of property” in the 1991 severe cyclone.
“When bodies of cyclone victims were floating on the water in Chattogram, BNP chairperson and former prime minister Begum Khaleda Zia changed seven ‘sarees’ in a day on the occasion of the then Pakistani prime minister Nawaz Sharif’s visit,” he added.
The information minister mentioned that many planes of Bangladesh Air Force were damaged in Chattogram due to negligence of the BNP government at that time.
Even after the deaths of so many people in the 1991 cyclone, the then premier Khaleda Zia said in parliament that the deaths were less than expected.
Referring to Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina’s deep affection for the countrymen, Dr Hasan said she has devoted her life to the welfare of the country and its people.
About Nur Hossain, he said the supreme sacrifice of Shaheed Nur Hossain and other martyrs of the anti-autocracy movement did not go in vain, rather the country’s democracy had its firm footing.
He added that not only Nur Hossain, Sheikh Hasina was also the target on November 10 of 1990.
Chaired by Shaheed Nur Hossain Day Observance Committee President Taslim Ahmed, the discussion was addressed by Dhaka City South AL General Secretary Shahe Alam Murad, Vice-President Nurul Amin Ruhul, MP, Joint General Secretary SA Mannan Kachi, Publicity Secretary Akhter Hossain, Shaheed Nur Hossain’s elder brother Mohammed Ali Hossain and Bangabandhu Sangskritik Jote General Secretary Arun Sarker Rana, among others.
BSS/ASG/BKD/MKD/SH/BR/2040hrs