Construction work of 13 school-cum-cyclone shelters in coastal Koyra upazila of the district is progressing fast with a deadline in February next year.

Sources at the upazila engineer's office said, the work for building the shelters involved overTk30 crore.

These buildings in the Sundarbans area can provide shelter to nearly 30,000 people of Koyra Sadar and Maheshwaripur union at the time of any natural disaster like cyclone or tidal surge.

Two contractor firms -Khaleque Enterprise and Dhali Construction - have taken up the work under a project of the Local Government Engineering

Department (LGED).

Tidal surge during cyclones 'Sidr' on November 15 in 2007 and 'Aila' on May 25 in 2009 wrecked colossal havoc in the coastal region of Sundarbans.

Giving utmost importance to the safety of people's lives and properties during natural disaster, the government took an initiative to build two-to-three storey school-cum-cyclone shelters in the region. Under the circumstances, the government appealed to the World Bank and other donor agencies to extend financial assistance to build the cyclone shelters.

In response to the government's request, different high-profile teams of representatives from the World Bank visited the disaster-hit areas several times and after-

wards, the government managed to construct some cyclone shelters.

During a recent visit, this correspondent found that almost 80 per cent work of the cyclone shelters in 3,4, 5 and 6 No. unions of Koyra and Kalikapur, Chowkuni, Madhya Maheshwaripur, Bhagba and Hodda of Maheshwaripur have been completed.

Upazila engineer KM Farukh Hossain expressed the hope that the construction work of the cyclone shelters would be finished within the next three months.

Once built, the school-cum-cyclone shelters will be of great use to the coastal people, both for academic activities and as shelter during natural calamities, the engineer added.