ADB confirms $41.4m assistance for Rohingyas in Cox's Bazar

The Asian Development Bank (ADB) and the Government of Bangladesh have signed an agreement for an additional $41.4 million to improve infrastructure and manage the basic needs of Rohingya sheltered in Cox’s Bazar in Bangladesh.

Economic Relations Division’s Secretary Fatima Yasmin, and ADB Country Director Edimon Gintingon on Wednesday signed the agreement on behalf of Bangladesh and ADB respectively.

The additional assistance forms the second phase of the ADB’s ongoing Emergency Assistance Project worth $100 million in a grant approved in 2018.

“The assistance will scale up the ongoing project by addressing the unmet basic and urgent needs identified for ADB assistance in 2018 but which remained unfunded due to grant funding constraints,” said ADB Country Director for Bangladesh Edimon Ginting.

“Disaster shelter centres, health facilities, improved water supply and sanitation, and better waste management that will be provided with ADB assistance, will reduce disaster risks, strengthen the resilience against Covid-19, and serve basic human needs of the camp population until their repatriation”.

The new assistance will build 200 water and sanitation facilities, and three solid waste management facilities, and will establish a piped water supply system at Ukhiya.

It will upgrade four health care facilities for severe acute respiratory infection, expand six primary health care and diagnostic centres in Teknaf, improve the skills of health care workers in Cox’s Bazar district, and construct a multipurpose disaster-resilient isolation centre to help with the Covid-19 response.

To strengthen disaster resilience and help protect displaced persons, six school-cum-cyclone shelters in local primary schools, and one multipurpose cyclone shelter, which will also function as a Covid-19 isolation centre, will be constructed. About 13 kilometres (km) of rural access roads leading to the camp facilities will be upgraded.

ADB has so far provided clean drinking water facilities, food distribution centres, and disaster shelters benefitting over 1.2 million people in the camps and host communities.

Safety in the camps also improved through solar street lamps, and lightning arresters. Roads, walkways, and bridges inside the camps improved the overall management of the camps as well as food distribution and other services.