The National Committee to Protect Oil, Gas, Mineral Resources, Power and Ports on Friday reiterated its vow to continue movements until its seven-point demands including scraping of the deals with ConocoPhillips for extraction of gas from two offshore blocks in the Bay of Bengal.
The national committee will continue its agitation programmes including hartals until the government scraps deals with foreign companies allowing exports of gas and mineral resources, the committee leaders warned.
The member secretary of the national committee Anu Muhammad, at a press conference at Moitri Auditorium at the office of Communist Party of Bangladesh, announced its five month programmes including a grand rally in the capital on November 26 to press for its demands.
Thousands of people from across the country with the slogan ‘Chalo Chalo Dhaka Chalo,’ will join the grand rally, Anu said.
The national committee will hold countrywide mass contract programmes before the grand rally including tours by the central leaders, hold one road march, one long march and central representatives meeting in the capital.
The programmes include countrywide tours by the central leaders from July 27 to 31, holding central representatives meeting in Dhaka on July 19 and observing Phulbari Day on August 26. The committee will hold Dhaka-Chittagong road march from September 24 to 28 and another march from Dhaka to Sunamganj-Netrokona from October 22 to 25.
Anu Muhammad termed the Petrobangla deals with ConocoPhillips an unequal deal, keeping the provision of exporting 80 per cent of the extracted gas under the Model Production and Sharing Contract-2008.
He demanded cancellation of the deals so that Bangla-desh can use all the extracted gas for domestic use.
Sheikh Muhammad Shaheedullah, the convener of the national committee, called on the government to refrain from formulating PSC-2011 for extraction of the onshore gas blocks specially of ‘Sunetra’ by the international oil companies.
He called on the government to extract the gas of ‘Sunetra’ by the national oil and gas exploration companies—Petrobangla and BAPEX.
The leaders of the committee justice Golam Rabbani, columnist Syed Abul Maksud, academics Nur Mohammad, politicians Tipu Biswas, Saiful Huq, Ruhin Hossain Prince, Bazlur Rashid Firoz, Ragib Ahsan Munna, Mushrefa Mishu, Zonayed Saki, Firoz Ahmed, Khan Asaduzzaman Masum and others attended the press conference.
-With New Age input
