Power company finds '36 faults' with UNESCO concern over Rampal plant

The Bangladesh-India Friendship Power Company has claimed to have found as many as 36 faults in the UNESCO letter that the UN body sent to the government recently expressing concern about setting up of the thermal power station at Rampal.

Armed with a release issued by the company, managing director Ujjal Bhattacharjee made the claim at an interaction session organised by the company at the Khulna Press Club. 

The proposed Rampal Thermal power plant, a joint initiative by India and Bangladesh has been in the eye of a storm with several environmental organizations in the country calling for aborting the project citing ecological hazards to the neighbouring Sundarbans. 

The Sundarbans is declared as a UNESCO World Heritage Site.

The UNESCO joined the chorus recently through a letter it had written to the government expressing concerns similar to those of the environmental activists. 

The government is determined to go ahead with the project as it believes that all care is taken to keep environmental damage to a minimum. 

State Minister for Power Nasrul Hamid had said that the environment ministry would respond to the UNESCO letter in a week's time. 

But the company handling the project has come up with this claim even before that. 

Lashing out at the international agencies Bhattacharjee said, "It is not necessary that all what the UNESCO or the World Bank says is true. The developed countries always want to keep the underdeveloped countries undeveloped". 

He said that while there is a 93 percent operational Thermal plants in South Africa, only 2 percent such plants operate in Bangladesh. 

Uninformed movement

Taking a dig at environmental organizations, Engineer Khandaker Azizur Rahman said, "Many such organizations have joined the protest without knowing much about it".

Criticizing the national oil-gas protection committee Member Secretary and Economics Professor Anu Muhammad, he said, "What does he understand about the environment?"

He claimed that the protesting environmentalists do not heed to several calls for a dialogue.

"We have invited them several times over for discussion on Sundarban damage. But they never come out of fear". 

'Pay heed to UNESCO concern'

Urging the government to heed to the UNESCO concerns, an oil-gas committee release however has said that the UNESCO team had visited Bangladesh and conducted a thorough field study before submitting its report.

The release pointed out that the UNESCO report had clearly asked the government to stop all economic activities in the Sundarbans that threaten its ecological balance.