Information Minister Dr Hasan Mahmud on Sunday said Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina has spent a sleepless night to monitor super cyclone ‘Bulbul’.

“Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina gave directives to tackle the cyclonic storm and she spent sleepless night,” he told a discussion marking the Shaheed Nur Hossain Day at the office of Dhaka City South AL at Bangabandhu Avenue here.

Shaheed Nur Hossain Sangsad arranged the discussion.

The minister, also Awami League Publicity and Publication Secretary, said the government took massive preparations to face the cyclonic storm. “That’s why lives and property of the coastal people got protected from the havoc,” he said.

Castigating the BNP leaders for dubbing the government preparations to tackle the cyclone as ‘insufficient’, Dr Hasan Mahmud suggested them to see their own face in mirror before criticizing the government.

During the BNP tenure, he said, thousands of people died and massive property were damaged in the 1991 severe cyclone.

“When bodies of cyclone victims were floating on the water in Chattogram, BNP chairperson and former prime minister Begum Khaleda Zia changed her seven ‘sarees’ in a day on the occasion of the then Pakistani prime minister Nawaz Sharif’s visit,” he added.

The information minister mentioned more than 35 warplanes of Bangladesh Air Force got damaged due to mismanagement of the BNP government at that time.

Referring to Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina’s deep affection towards the countrymen, Dr Hasan said she has devoted her life to the welfare of the country and its people.

About Nur Hossain, he said the supreme sacrifice of Shaheed Nur Hossain and other martyrs of the anti-autocracy movement did not go in vain rather the country’s democracy had been established through it.

Chaired by Shaheed Nur Hossain Day Observance Committee President Taslim Ahmed, the discussion was addressed by Dhaka City South AL General Secretary Shahe Alam Murad, Vice-President Nurul Amin Ruhul, MP, Joint General Secretary SA Mannan Kachi, Publicity Secretary Akhter Hossain, Shaheed Nur Hossain’s elder brother Mohammed Ali Hossain and Bangabandhu Sangskritik Jote General Secretary Arun Sarker Rana, among others.