RANGPUR, May 4, 2020 (BSS) – Leaders of Rangpur Chamber of Commerce and Industry (RCCI) at a meeting have decided to form an emergency relief fund to continue providing food and other humanitarian assistance to the jobless and needy people.
President of RCCI Mostafa Sohrab Chowdhury Titu presided over the meeting at its board room here maintaining physical distance in the wake of the coronavirus (COVID-19) outbreak on Sunday afternoon.
Leaders of RCCI, different trade bodies and institutions of the metropolis, industrialists and businesspersons participated in the meeting and unequivocally favoured raising the emergency relief assistance fund to face the COVID-19 situation.
Senior Vice-president of RCCI Mostoba Hossain Ripon, Deputy Managing Director of Rangpur Group Ashraful Alam Al Amin, Rangpur Branch Manager of Lab Aid Diagnostic Centre NM Shahanur Rahman, Directors of RCCI Akbar Hossain, Reaz Shahid Shovan, Partho Bose and President of district unit of Bangladesh Agriculture Machineries Merchants’ Association Shahnewaz Rahman Labu addressed.
In the beginning, Titu said the RCCI distributed a food package among 1,800 jobless, destitute and needy families of the district from its own resources on April 5 last in the first phase to stand beside them amid the coronavirus situation.
“Each of the beneficiary families then received a sac containing five kg of rice, two kg of potato, one kg each of onion, edible oil and pulse, two pieces of soaps and 500 gram each of iodized salt and flattened rice,” he said.
But, thousands of day-labourers, workers, rickshaw pullers, small scale traders, orphans and marginal people are in dire need of food assistance amid joblessness caused from closure of trade, business, factories and industries due to COVID-19 outbreak.
“The number of jobless people continues increasing everyday with the deteriorating COVID-19 situation and they need food and other humanitarian assistance on an emergency basis probably for a longer period,” Titu said.
The participants spontaneously decided to contribute food, money, masks, hand sanitizers, soap, medicines and other goods to the emergency relief assistance fund for the jobless people to stand beside them until the COVID-19 situation becomes normal.
Directors of RCCI Md. Shahjahan Babu, Md. Zulfiquer Ali Khan Bhutto, Md. Obaidur Rahman Ratan, Md. Habibur Rahman Raja, Khemchand Somani Rabi, Ajay Prasad Babon, among others, were present.