COX’S BAZAR: The UN has drawn up a contingency plan to feed up to 700,000 Muslim Rohingya refugees from Myanmar after some 480,000 fled to Bangladesh over the past month and arrivals continue.

A senior official from the UN’s World Food Programme (WFP) told AFP they were now prepared to provide massive food and other emergency aid if the influx continues in coming weeks.

“All the UN agencies together have now set a plan for a new influx of 700,000. We can cover if the new influx reaches 700,000,” said the WFP’s deputy chief in Bangladesh, Dipayan Bhatta­charyya, on Wednesday.

Bhattacharyya said the hunger situation in camps has improved as food aid from WFP and other agencies is now reaching the refugees.

He said the plan also covers some 300,000 Rohingya who were already sheltering in southeast Bangladesh before the latest influx began — meaning it could cater for a million people in total.

“No one would be left out from any humanitarian assistance,” he said, adding that the WFP would need about $80 million for the massive aid.

UN High Commissioner for Refugees Filippo Grandi visited the overflowing camps last week and said Bangladesh needs “massive international assistance” to feed and shelter the Rohingya.

Grandi said there had been an “incredible outpouring of local generosity” but that now needed to be “beefed up by massive international assistance, financial and material”.

Three Rohingya arrested with meth pills

Bangladesh police on Wednesday arrested three Rohingya men and a Bangladeshi who were trying to smuggle 800,000 methamphetamine pills into the country from Myanmar, an official said. Officers from Bangladesh’s elite Rapid Action Battalion (RAB) detained the four men on a fishing trawler in the estuary of the River Naf, which divides the two countries.

“We caught four people trafficking Yaba tablets. Three of them are Rohingya from Myanmar and the other one is a Bangladeshi,” said Major Ruhul Amin, an RAB area commander. “They were carrying 800,000 yaba tablets on a boat. They brought the yabas from Myanmar. Two of the Rohingyas came here recently. And the other one is an old refugee,” he added.

Yaba, a Thai word meaning “crazy medicine”, is a concoction of methamphetamine and caffeine that has become popular among young people in Bangladesh.

In recent years Bangladeshi security forces have seized millions of yaba tablets from traffickers attempting to enter Cox’s Bazar by land and sea.

Published in Dawn, September 28th, 2017