BNP calls for nationwide fuel price protests

Lambasting the recent fuel price hikes that resulted in spiralling transport fares, Bangladesh Nationalist Party (BNP) has called for fuel price protests.  

The party will organise protest rallies in metropolitan cities outside Dhaka on 10 November and in district headquarters across the country on 12 November, BNP General Secretary Mirza Fakhrul Islam Alamgir told a human chain in Dhaka Monday.

Fakhrul came down heavily on the government, saying the transport fare hikes have caused a double whammy to the people: once by raising the price of fuel oil and liquefied petroleum gas (LPG), and again by increasing bus and launch fares.

He said the fuel price hike was a ploy.

"The people in the whole country need to be awakened. As long as this Awami League government stays in power, the suffering of the people will continue to increase," the BNP secretary general said.

"People will be helpless more and more and they will be poorer. The opportunity to speak will be stopped so the people have to take to the streets now."

He said the Bangladesh Petroleum Corporation (BPC) has made a profit of Tk43,000 crore.

"In the past, when oil prices fell in the international market, the BPC did not reduce oil prices. Today, when prices have started to increase internationally, people at BPC are saying that prices could be maintained without increasing for another six months," Mirza Fakhrul said.

"But they did not do that because the character of this government is to loot the people's money. On the one hand, they are burning a hole in people's pockets, and on the other, they are fattening their wallets. They are siphoning off thousands of crores of taka abroad," he added.

In a separate development, Jatiya Party Chairman and Deputy Leader of the Opposition in Parliament, GM Quader, said the government had unreasonably increased the price of diesel and kerosene.

"We demand a reduction in oil prices," he added. "But the government has taken a stand against the interests of the common people by increasing fares on roads and waterways, instead of reducing oil prices."

In a press statement, GM Quader termed the decision to increase oil prices and transport costs "anti-people".

"We are calling for reducing the increase in diesel and kerosene prices," he added. "We are also demanding a reduction in increased fares on roads and waterways."