Staff Correspondent

Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina on Monday urged the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) to make an effort to raise a larger international fund than currently available for supporting the Rohingya people seeking shelter in Bangladesh.

She made the call at a meeting with visiting UNDP Goodwill Ambassador and Crown Princess of Sweden Victoria at a hotel in the capital.

PM’s speech writer Md Nazrul Islam briefed reporters after the meeting.

The prime minister said Bangladesh had given shelter to forcibly displaced Rohingyas from Myanmar on humanitarian grounds and arranged improved accommodation for them in Bhashanchar. Now some one lakh Rohingyas can reside in Bhashanchar, she added.

She sought assistance from the UNDP to relocate more Rohingyas to Bhashanchar.

Princess Victoria arrived in Dhaka on Monday on a four-day visit to Bangladesh during which she will tour Rohingya camps in Cox’s Bazar and Bhashanchar.

Bilateral and multilateral issues including climate change came up for discussion during the meeting with the PM.

The crown princess said there is a huge scope to deepen bilateral relations between Sweden and Bangladesh.

She expressed her optimism for strengthening the bilateral ties between the two countries especially over trade, business and investment.

Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina urged Swedish businesses to invest in Bangladesh particularly in the country’s special economic zones.

The PM also said that Bangladesh is one of the worst victims of climate change. Bangladesh’s contribution to carbon emission is negligible and yet the country is badly affected. Bangladesh faces different natural calamities like floods and cyclones due to climate change, she said.

About the local climate adaptation and mitigation programmes, she said Bangladesh formed a climate trust fund to protect the local community and their livelihood.

The PM said her government’s main goal is poverty alleviation and it has already reduced the poverty rate to 18.7% from 41% and the extreme poverty rate to 5.6% from 25.1%.

She said the government has been providing the homeless people with free cyclone-resistant houses throughout the country so that there will be no homeless people in Bangladesh

She said her government constructed cyclone shelters on the coastal areas.

Hasina recalled her first visit to Sweden in 1969, when her husband was there for study.