Rohingya Relocation: ‘I moved hearing about facilities’

Sixty-year-old Mohammed Hossen, a Rohingya from Kutupalong camp, who never thought that he would ever move to Bhasan Char about which he used to hear various negative things.

However, well accommodation and better facilities than those of in refugee camps in Cox's Bazar's Ukhia made him change his mind.

"I never thought I would go to Bhasan Char. But I changed my mind when I came to know about the good accommodation and better facilities there from one of my younger brothers who was moved there in the first batch," Hossen told The Daily Star at the Boat Club of Patenga from where they set off for the island.

He said his younger brother told him that there is a good environment that helped him make the decision to go there.

Some 2,010 Rohingyas, including Hossen, in the fourth batch reached Bhasan Char in Noakhali's Hatiya.

They left Patenga on five ships, each carrying around 500, under the supervision of Bangladesh Navy.

Of them, Sultana Begum, 35, was from Balukhali refugee camp.

"My sister-in-law went there [Bhasan Char] in the third phase. I was in two minds whether to go there or not. But an assurance from my sister-in-law that there exists a better environment than that of in Balukhali refugee camp, I decided to go to Bhasan Char to start a new life," she said.

Sultana's two kids are also accompanying her in the journey.

The Rohingyas started boarding the ships at dawn. They were taken to Chattogram in 39 buses from various camps of Cox's Bazar.

Shamsud Douza Nayan, additional commissioner at Refugee, Relief and Repatriation Commission, told this paper that the fourth batch comprising 2,010 Rohingyas reached the island at 1:45pm yesterday.

The first batch of Rohingyas was relocated there on December 4 last year. Around 10,000 Rohingyas are now living at the island's facility.