The prime minister, Sheikh Hasina, on Wednesday told the parliament that the lawmakers of the main opposition seemed to be eager to return to the house but were staying out because of their leaders.

‘Although the opposition [lawmakers] are not physically present in the parliament, they are participating in its proceedings indirectly. As I have come to know from you [speaker] that the opposition lawmakers are making requests to you as to who should raise their respective questions on their behalf during the [prime minister’s] question-answer session,’ she said. The speaker acknowledged that the opposition lawmakers were approaching him with such requests. A total of six questions were raised in the house for the prime minister to answer, of them four questions were from the opposition bench.

Hasina said the indirect presence of the opposition in the house proved that their lawmakers were eager to return but could not do so as yet because of their leaders. She made the comments when Jatiya Party lawmaker Mujibul Huq Chunnu raised a question on behalf of absentee BNP lawmaker Zafrul Islam Chowdhury of Chittagong-15 constituency during the question-answer hour scheduled for the prime minister in the house, with the speaker, Abdul Hamid in the chair. Replying to a question raised on behalf of absentee BNP lawmaker, Nazim Uddin Ahmed, Hasina assured the house that the people would get rid of power crisis by 2011 and as outlined in her government’s vision the country would be self-reliant in electricity by the year 2021 when the entire population would be brought under electricity facilities.

She also informed the house that the government had formulated a plan to increase power generation taking into consideration the prevailing gas crisis in order to meet the ever-increasing demand for power. Under the current plan, the prime minister said a total of 3,462 megawatts of power would be added to the national grid by 2014 which included 667 MW by December this year, 900 MW by June, 2012 and 1,895 MW by June, 2014. Answering a question from JP’s Mujibul Huq Chunnu, Hasina said her government had a plan to turn the tourist resorts in Cox’s Bazar, Sundarban and Kuakata into world class ones to attract more foreign tourists. She said that the government was considering package tour programmes for foreign tourists in Bangladesh.

Replying to AL MP Mahfuza Mandal, she said the government had already taken steps for dredging of the rivers to restore their navigability and the shipping ministry has undertaken a grand plan in this regard. Initially, a development project worth Tk 12,000 crore has been approved by the planning commission for the purpose, she said. Replying to a question raised on behalf of BNP’s legislator, Adul Khayer Bhuiyan, the prime minister said her government had taken up programmes to create jobs to tackle the unemployment problem and hoped unemployment would be brought down to 15 per cent from the present 40 per cent by 2021.

To a supplementary question from JP’s Anisul Huq Mandal, she said the people of the northern region would forget the word ‘Monga’ [starvation] as her government had taken extensive initiatives for employment in the region. Answering a question by BNP’s Ashraf Uddin, the prime minister said the National Housing Authority would build 17,677 flats in next five years for the middle and low income people in order to ease the accommodation problem. Besides, the Rajdhani Unnayan Kartripakkha has taken up a plan to construct 52,512 flats for low and middle income people.

-New Age