Civil Aviation and Tourism Minister Engineer Mosharraf Hossain yesterday told the Jatiya Sangsad that the government has been contemplating to build tourism centres in places of tourist interest of the country, reports BSS.

The minister was replying to a private member's resolution moved by ruling party lawmaker from Comilla M Tajul Islam demanding establishment of a tourist centre in Lak-sham police station of Comilla district.

The resolution was, however. withdrawn by Mr Islam following request from the minister.

Earlier, eight parliamentarians from both treasury bench and opposition moved their respective amendments to the resolution proposing to establish tourist centres in their respective thanas and other thanas of the country.

Abdul Latif Mirza (AL-Sirajganj), Shamsul Alam Para-manik (BNP-Naogaon). M Waziuddin Khan (AL-Pabna), Zafrul Islam Chowdhury (BNP-Chit-tagong), ABM Abdul Kashem (AL-Chittagong), M Shahidul Islam (BNP-Jhenidah), Prof Shahidul Islam (BNP-Kushtia) and Panchanan Biswas (AL-Khulna) moved the amendments.

The tourism minister said Bangladesh is blessed with natural beauty and tourist centres could be built centering beautiful places. He said the government has been making efforts to build tourist centres in certain places and at the same time it has been encouraging development of tourism in private sector.

He listed various development programmes taking place in the tourism sector including that in Kuakata sea resort and Cox's Bazar sea resort and said the Sundarbans was declared as world heritage site.

Moving this resolution, Islam said once the tourist centre is established at Laksham a large number of people from home and abroad would be able to visit the area, generating economic benefits for the local