The National Committee to Protect Oil, Gas, Mineral Resources, Power and Ports on Tuesday called on the Awami League-led government to cancel the inequitable deal signed with US company ConocoPhillips for extraction of the gas of two gas blocks in the Bay of Bengal.
The also called on the government to pass a Bill in the Parliament to stop export of the mineral resources of the country.
The national committee on Saturday, at a press conference, announced the hartal on July 3 in protest against the deal with the US company signed on Thursday.
The national committee marched from the Paltan crossing to Bahadur Shah Park in Old Dhaka to drum up support for the half-day hartal called by it in the capital to underline the demand for cancellation of the 'one-sided' deal.
The leaders said the deal was contrary to the national interest as most of the extracted gas would be exported by the company, according to the deal which has been fashioned in line with the Model Production and Sharing Contract 2008.
Prior to the march, the committee staged a rally in Paltan crossing where its leaders Nur Muhammad, Zulfikar Ali and Khan Asaduzzaman Masum addressed the activists.
The committee will march today (Wednesday) from Jatrabari to Saidabad.
The former presidents and general secretaries of various left-leaning student organisations, in a press statement, denounced the verbal attack in the Parliament by the state minister for forest and environment, Hasan Mahmud, on the national committee and its leaders on Sunday.
They said that his comments, in which he termed the national committee as an organisation of street urchins and criticised the role of Anu Muhammad, were indecent.
Many prominent leftist leaders are involved with the committee and Anu Muhammad is an eminent economist and teacher of the Jahangirnagar University, said the former student leaders.
They called on the Awami League leaders to refrain from making such sweeping comments as the hartal has been called to save the natural resources of the country from exploitation by foreign companies.
Former student leaders Nur Ahmed Bakul, Ruhin Hossain Prince, Belal Chowdhury, Ragib Ahsan Munna, Bazlur Rashid Firoz, Razequzzaman Ratan and Aslam Khan and others were among the signatories to the statement.
Source : New Age
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