District admin building shelters for new refugees in Balukhali

Cox’s Bazar district administration is building shelters at Balukhali to accommodate around 200,000 Rohingyas and bring them in one place, as per a report on bdnews24.com.

“They have been scattered all over Cox’s Bazar. The administration is working to bring them together in one place,” said Additional District Magistrate Khaled Mahmud on Sunday.

“We are building shelters in Balukhali where Rohingyas will get relief and a place to stay. The refugees now roaming the streets will themselves move to Balukhali once our work is finished,” he added.

According to UN, nearly 300,000 Rohingya Muslims have crossed over to Bangladesh to escape a violent army operation in Myanmar.

Bangladesh, already housing around half a million refugees from past violence in Myanmar, was trying to shelter the new arrivals in bordering sub-districts of Cox’s Bazar.

Mahmud said sporadic relief work was “ultimately hampering the administration’s goal to get the refugees together in one place”.

“It is difficult to relocate refugees from a place where they get relief items. So we are trying to provide relief to them only in Balukhali.”