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In a move to safeguard communities facing disaster risks, the government has decided to construct 120 more cyclone shelter centres in 13 coastal districts, officials said.
The cyclone shelter centres will be built between January 2024 and December 2027 under a project taken up by the Department of Disaster Management with full funding from the government.
Initially, the department had planned to establish 360 cyclone shelter centres and 150 livestock shelters under a project titled 'Construction of Multipurpose Cyclone Shelter Centres in Coastal and Cyclone-Prone Areas (Third Phase)'.
The project's estimated cost stood at Tk 31.39 billion. These cyclone shelters would be used as educational institutions.
However, a recent meeting of the project evaluation committee (PEC) on the development project proposal (DPP) at the Planning Commission recommended reducing the number of cyclone shelters to 120 and cancelling the livestock shelter component.
In this case, the Planning Commission suggested considering the fiscal space under the medium-term budget framework (MTBF) for the Ministry of Disaster Management and Relief.
The commission asked not to construct shelters in Faridpur and Madaripur districts, as initially proposed, due to their lower cyclone vulnerability.
At the PEC meeting, Firoz Uddin, additional secretary of the Department of Disaster Management, mentioned Bangladesh's ranking of ninth out of 192 countries in the Global Risk Report-2022, placing it fifth among Asian nations.
Elaborating on the project's rationale, he said that around 35 million people reside in coastal and cyclone-prone areas across 17 districts, representing more than one-fifth of the country's 160 million people.
He said that by 2020, the government had constructed 2,000 cyclone shelters and 10,130 disaster-resilient houses to mitigate disaster risks for coastal communities.
However, despite these efforts, he acknowledged that coastal residents, their properties and livestock remained vulnerable to the devastating impacts of cyclones.
Under the first phase of the 'Construction of Multipurpose Cyclone Shelter Centres in Coastal and Cyclone-Prone Areas' project, the department built 100 multi-purpose cyclone shelter centres. In the second phase, 220 such centres will be constructed. Seven more centres were built under another project.
Each three-storey shelter centre, measuring 6,084.78 square feet, will cost Tk 74.30 million, according to Mr Uddin.
A senior official at the Ministry of Finance told the FE that the construction of more cyclone shelter centres was necessary to provide protection to people in disaster-prone coastal districts as an increased number of climatic events were hitting the country.
"The impacts of climate change are increasingly becoming visible in Bangladesh," he said, adding, especially cyclones and tropical storms are now hitting frequently.
However, he also recognised the economic constraints imposed by the global recession and the war in Ukraine, prompting the government to adopt a belt-tightening. Consequently, the number of shelters in the project's third phase was reduced from 360 to 120.