State Minister for Disaster Management and Relief Dr Mohammad Enamur Rahman has announced plans to demolish all the dilapidated buildings and construct earthquake-resistant buildings in the country.
He made the remarks while participating in a dialogue titled "How Ready We Are in Disaster Management" organized by the Bangladesh Secretariat Reporters Forum (BSRF) at the Secretariat this afternoon.
The state minister said, "I will demolish all the dilapidated buildings. These will be rebuilt in an earthquake-resistant design with the technical and financial support of Japan. The design is done in such a way that the buildings have 7.5 magnitude earthquake tolerance.”
We will test some of the buildings already built, if there are any weaknesses, they will be strengthened. The new buildings that are being constructed now have to comply with BNBC (Bangladesh National Building Code), he added.
He added that in this case, the buildings declared as heritage by the Department of Archeology were not included in the list. The ones that are as heritage are in specific work. The ones we're talking about are residential buildings.
The state minister said a plan was taken to plant one crore palm saplings in the 2017-18 financial year to reduce deaths and damage due to lightning. After planting 3.7 million palm trees, it was found that most of the trees were damaged due to lack of care. Then I canceled it after taking charge.
He said it takes about 50 years for a palm tree to grow tall. It will not be able to play such an effective role in preventing lightning. Now modern scientific methods have been introduced to prevent lightning. We are now working to implement that in our country.
Initiatives have been taken to set up shelters and lightning arresters to reduce casualties in lightning strikes, the state minister said, "We have decided to introduce awareness, campaign and early warning systems to reduce lightning deaths. The mobile app will be able to warn 40 minutes before. A small Lightning Center and Lightning Arrester will be set up for those who live in open space. I will start if DPP is approved. I have put 40 experimentally.”
President of the organization Tapan Biswas presided over the dialogue with the presentation of Masudul Haque, General Secretary of BSRF.
