Shawdesh Desk:

Bangladesh Nationalist Party on Monday demanded resignation of health minister and two mayors of the Dhaka city for their failure at combating dengue menace that has already spread across 50 districts, besides the capital.

BNP secretary general Mirza Fakhrul Islam Alamgir, addressing a press briefing following a standing committee meeting at the party chairperson’s office at Gulshan in Dhaka Monday night, also informed that the standing committee had decided to take part in the by-election of Rangpur-3 constituency which become vacant at the death of Jatiya Party chairman HM Ershad.

He said that the committee also decided to distribute dengue awareness leaflets in Dhaka and elsewhere in the country.

Fakhrul said that the mayors — Sayeed Khokon and M Atiqul Islam — were only speaking about dengue check but were not working to check it.

‘They failed totally in controlling mosquito. They should resign,’ he said, adding that they also demanded resignation of health minister Zahid Maleque for his failure in ending dengue.

He said that Doctors’ Association of Bangladesh was working to prepare the contents of the leaflets to be distributed among the people to create awareness against the mosquito-borne disease.

Fakhrul said that they had decided to take part in the Rangpur-3 by-election and the standing committee had given the responsibility to the party’s acting chairman, Tarique Rahman, who joined the meeting through Skype from London, to nominate the candidate.

He said that the standing committee expressed worries over the present flood situation and the government’s poor response to the flood victims.

He demanded that the government should have plans to provide the affected farmers with seeds, fertiliser and other agricultural materials at free of cost and bank loan waiver for farmers in the affected areas.