Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina has alleged that opposition leader wants to take Bangladesh backward as she (Khaleda Zia) promised to make the country a middle-income one by 2030, against the Awami League-led grand alliance government's timeframe of 2021.
“In our previous term, we gained success in various fields including in power, literacy and food production. But, later we [nation] moved backwards in all the fields when the BNP assumed power,” she claimed yesterday while inaugurating the three-month-long tree plantation programme of Bangladesh Krishak League at a function at her official Gono Bhaban residence.
Hasina iterated that imbued with the spirit of Liberation War, her government was working tirelessly to make the country a middle-income one by 2021 when Bangladesh will be observing its golden jubilee of independence.
“Everyone will have to work with determination to make Bangladesh prosperous by 2021,” she said, and expressed her strong resolve to bring Bangladesh out of hunger and poverty as dreamt by Father of the Nation Bangabandhu Sheikh Mujibur Rahman.
Agriculture Minister Matia Chowdhury, Food and Disaster Management Minister M Abdur Razzaque, and Environment and Forests Minister Hasan Mahmud also addressed the function, chaired by Krishak League President Mirza Jalil.
Krishak League, the farmers' wing of AL, has been conducting the tree plantation campaign every year since 1985, Hasina said.
She directed the Krishak League leaders and activists and others to motivate all, especially the authorities at schools, colleges and hospitals, to plant saplings to protect the environment and biodiversity.
She also asked them for social afforestation by planting coconut, palm and tamarisk (Jhao) trees on the lands reclaimed through river dredging to protect the country from various natural disasters like cyclone and tidal surge.
Claiming that the BNP-Jamaat alliance government had cut trees indiscriminately, Hasina said: “Trees could not be protected from their [BNP] monstrous hunger… it is in their character to commit murder and engage in extremism and terrorism.”