BNP Secretary General Mirza Fakhrul Islam Alamgir on Thursday alleged that an artificial crisis of rice and different food grains has been created to make a quick buck by raising their prices.
“The problem with the present government is that they want to make profits from everything, even from essential food items, illegally,” he said.
Talking to reporters in front of a hospital in Dhaka, he said the famine Bangladesh faced in 1974 was caused by misrule and corruption, not by food crisis.
"In the same way, they are now unjustly raising the prices after stockpiling the food grains that people need much. They are raising the prices in the market by creating an artificial crisis,” the BNP leader said.
Fakhrul went to Health Aid Diagnostic and Hospital in the city’s Basabo area to visit Jatiotabadi Chhatra Dal Senior Vice President Rashed Iqbal Khan, Organizing Secretary Abu Afsan Mohammad Yahya and Dhaka North leader Shahabuddin Shihab, who were seriously injured in attacks by Chhatra League on May 24 on the Dhaka University campus.
He voiced concern that the prices of wheat, flour, milk and bread have gone up alongside rice.
“What will our poor people do? Most rickshaw pullers eat a banana and bread from footpath shops. The price of that bread has doubled. The price of rice has gone up by Tk10-Tk15 per kg,” the BNP leader said.
He said the government itself is playing the biggest role in raising the prices of essential and food items. “Their evil tricks are behind it, but people are going through immense sufferings.”
Fakhrul said the Awami League government wants to hang onto to power by resorting to terrorism, not with the love of people. "This is their basic character. Not just this time, they have been trying to establish their politics in the country through terrorism since their inception.”
He alleged that the ruling party is now trying to cling to power by holding the next polls under it, terrorizing and intimidating people. “People of Bangladesh will not give them a chance this time to make it happen.
The BNP leader said Awami League must step down from power and the election has to be conducted by a neutral election commission under a neutral government.