The government spends a staggering Tk 25 billion each month behind the Rohingya refugees living in Cox’s Bazar, said Foreign Minister AK Abdul Momen.
Over 700,000 Rohingyas fled neigbouring Myanmar to escape a military crackdown in Rakhine state in 2017, in what’s being described as ethnic cleansing.
According to sources at Cox’s Bazar district administration and United Nations, around 65,000 Rohingya children were born since then and the number stands well over one million now.
“We won’t host anymore Rohingya. There are 192 more countries in the world, they should also host some Rohingyas. Why only us?” Momen told an RFA-affiliated online news portal BenarNews.
He said that Bangladesh was spending Tk 25 billion each for the refugees each month which is a combination of foreign aid and local funds.
A UN report in June last year estimated that government is likely to spend at least $600 million on the nearly one million Rohingyas each year.
For the last two years, the Bangladesh government has been bearing the expense which isn’t favourable for the economy.
During the last fiscal the government allocated Tk billion for the Rohingtyas and spent nearly Tk 25 million to build a permanent settlement for them at Noakhali’s Bhashanchar. The entire project was funded by the government according to finance ministry sources.
According to a Rohingya-related committee report around 165,000 camps were built at Cox’s Bazar at the cost of cutting down hills and damaging biodiversity worth nearly Tk 4 billion. The land itself is government property and worth nearly Tk 15 billion.
According to the forest division, the camps have been set up in violation of the Wildlife (Conservation and Security) Act, 2012.
Meanwhile, Chattogram Divisional Commissioner Abdul Mannan told Bangla Tribune that the total amount spent by the government and aid agencies have not been added up and its not feasible either.
“The government has funded many of the expenses on its own. Moreover, the cost of law enforcement and health care is massive,” he said.
Echoing Mannan, former deputy commissioner Cox’s Bazar said that there are expenses behind the Rohingyas that are impossible to add up as those expenses come in the form of extra administrative manpower and it was affecting the economy negatively.
Senior Secretary Shah Kamal of the disaster management and relief ministry said that the government fund and aid combined spent behind the Rohingyas is quite staggering.