Planning Minister MA Mannan on Sunday said that there is a business behind medicines like arms trading.
He also said, “The cost of medicine is increasing, there is commerce behind it. We understand, but cannot grasp. The arms trade is much the same.”
Mannan said this while speaking as the chief guest at Bangladesh National ‘WASH’ (water, sanitation, and hygiene) Accounts 2020 publication event at the Bangabandhu International Conference Center in the city on Sunday.
Hasin Jahan, Country Director of Water Aid, an international NGO, and Secretary of the Statistics and Information Management Department Dr Shahnaz Arefin was present at the event.
Criticising WASA water, the minister said that many people are trading bottled water. In Switzerland, people don't drink bottled water, they drink tap water.
“Now bottled water is also sold in villages in Bangladesh. WASA water is not safe. Bacteria are found after a few days. These are the reasons,” he added.
He also said, “Once there was cholera (acute diarrheal) in the villages, now it is not. One of my family died of cholera. I am at the end of my life. I want to say, that water has many roles.”
Mannan said, “Now many water bodies like (Khal and Bil) are also leased in the villages, and many people could eat fish from these water bodies. The people of the village cannot even go to these canals. We need to get out of this injustice.”
The expenditure on water, sanitation, and hygiene (WASH) per household (family) stood at Tk 11574, which is 4.3 percent of the household's annual income. The cost of keeping a person healthy is increasing day by day.
According to the WASH report prepared by the Bangladesh Bureau of Statistics in 2020, a person spends Tk3491 on water, sanitation, and hygiene per year. The average cost of a family is Tk11574. This is 4.3 percent of the total income of a family and 2.18 percent of GDP spent on WASH annually.
According to the National Wash Accounts report, a person spends Tk2093 on hygiene, Tk 500 on water, and Tk898 on sanitation.
The report mentioned it is too much compared to the global context. About 60 percent of the total WASH expenditure is spent on hygiene and 26 percent on sanitation. 14 percent of the total wash cost is spent on potable (clean) water.