By JOSEPH ALLCHIN

Dhaka has rejected a proposed $US33 million UN project to alleviate poverty in Bangladesh’s Cox’s Bazaar where several hundred thousand Rohingya refugees have sought asylum.

The impoverished region lies close the border with Burma’s western Arakan state, from where hundreds of thousands of the persecuted Muslim minority have fled.

But the issue of aid to this region has been locked in battle over assistance to the Rohingya. An unnamed Bangladeshi official quoted by the Express newspaper said: “The finance ministry has rejected the scheme because the actual aim of the UN initiative is to rehabilitate refugees in Cox’s Bazar district under the pretext of poverty reduction for locals.”


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