Dhaka: Speakers in Dhaka on Thursday said about 20,000 people living in remote areas of Thanchi upazila of hilly Bandarban have been affected by food crisis. Of them, people of inaccessible 11 frontier villages are the worst affected.  

They stressed the need for taking long term projects involving both the government and the NGOs for solving food crisis in the upazila.  

The speakers said this while addressing a media briefing at Brac Centre at Mohakhali in the capital.

Disaster management climate change (DMCC) and communication units of Brac organised the press briefing.

Kazi Abu Mohammad Morshed, director of advocacy for social change of Brac, Gawher Nayeen Wahra, director of disaster management climate change (DMCC), Kamlai Murong, former chairman of Thanchi upazila of Bandarban district, among others, spoke at the programme.

Children of the areas have been suffering from severe malnutrition and they failed to continue their studies during the food crisis, which started in March this year, the programme was told.  

The speakers identified a number of natural and geographical reasons and processing limitations, which they believe, are responsible for the food problem.

The reasons and limitations are influence of cyclone Komen and untimely rainfall, failure to market cash crops by locals, malaria outbreak, lack of jongli variety of potato, failure to possess national ID card by many residents, communication problem due to less flow of water in Sangu river, inadequate communication system and restriction on colleting resources from conserved forest area of Sangu.

The development organization put forward a number of recommendations, including giving permission to collect forest resources from conserved forest area of Sangu , giving financial assistance along with rice distribution among the affected people, for solving the problem.