The Awami League is implementing various programmes with the country and its people in mind, Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina has said. She said the party has taken various steps and is implementing programmes to protect the environment.

"Bangladesh is the only country in the world that has formed a climate trust fund with its own money and is working with it. We want to build Bangladesh into a developed, prosperous country, and that is what we will do," she said.

She was speaking on the morning of 15 June at the inauguration of a tree-planting programme at Ganabhaban.

Krishak League, an associate body of the Awami League, organised the tree-planting programme and the "Best Tree Planter 2021" award ceremony on the Ganabhaban premises.

At 9.30am, Prime Minister and Awami League president Sheikh Hasina inaugurated the programme by planting chhatim, sapheda and haritaki saplings on the Ganabhaban premises, and called on everyone to plant trees.

Urging everyone to plant at least one fruit, one timber and one medicinal tree, she said not everyone in the capital may have space, but there are rooftops, so people should make gardens on the roofs of their homes. Suggesting rooftop gardens on government offices, she said city dwellers can also plant a small tree on their balcony. "Plant at least one tree each."

Sheikh Hasina said that since 1985 they have been planting trees widely for three months from the first day of the month of Asharh, with Krishak League, the Awami League and all its associate bodies carrying out the programme across the country. On the instruction of the Father of the Nation, a jhau (casuarina) forest was raised on the Cox's Bazar coast, and in 1997, after proper steps were taken to protect it, the Sundarbans was listed as a World Heritage site, she said.

Source: Jagonews24. First published in Bengali on The Agro News.