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Oil Spill Impact

UN team starts work today

Staff Correspondents
The United Nations team to help Bangladesh clean up the oil spill in the Sundarbans will start their work in the area from today.
Meanwhile, a separate investigation committee of the BNP that visited affected areas in the forest, alleged that even though foreigners were interested to save the Sundarbans, the government showed its negligence to do that.
The UNDP expert team comprising experts from home and abroad would support the government's cleanup efforts of the oil spill in addition to assessing the situation and advising how to reduce such disaster risks, forest officials said.
A statement from the UN said the expert team would work closely with the government in the coming days.
The team members having expertise in protecting the ecosystem of a mangrove forest in the wake of an oil spill reached Mongla yesterday afternoon, added the statement.
The UN team comprised two experts from Centre of Documentation, Research and Experimentation on Accidental Water Pollution (CEDRE), one from the US National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), one from the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP), two from the United Nations Disaster Assessment and Coordination (UNDAC), one from the UNDP and two more experts on environmental disasters.
Besides, officials from the ministry of environment, the department of environment, the forest department and also experts from the Dhaka University, Chittagong University and Khulna University and Wildlife
Conservation Society are included in the team.
"The UN team would start visiting the affected areas in the forest from early morning tomorrow," said Amir Hossain Chowdhury yesterday, divisional forest officer, Sundarbans Eastern zone.
Meanwhile, the BNP investigation team led by the party's vice chairman Major (Retd) Hafiz Uddin Ahmed said the government had been taking different destructive measures for the Sundarbans.
While talking to journalists after visiting the area, he said it was astonishing to see that such an unfit vessel was carrying furnace oil through a river in the protected forest.
"If the government had any interest to protect the Sundarbans, they would not allow it at all," he said.
He demanded the government take immediate measures to support local people as the oil spill had badly affected the livelihood of local fishermen and also to provide medical care to those who were scooping out oil from plants and river water.
Former MP of Khulna-2 constituency Nazrul Islam Manzu, Bagerhat district BNP president MA Salam, Khulna district BNP president Shafiqul Islam Mona, environment journalist Quamrul Islam, president of Sundarbans Foundation Dr Faridul Islam, among others, were in the BNP investigation committee.