What are they based on?
It is with bemusement that we note our Minister for Relief and Disaster Management giving such categorical assurance that Bangladesh will not experience a massive earthquake in the magnitude of 8 or 9 on the Richter scale. This he has said in the backdrop of a study by a geologist at Columbia University in New York City that has found that Dhaka sits on a dangerous fault which could trigger a massive earthquake affecting around 140 million people in the region that includes Bangladesh, India and Myanmar.
While we are not suggesting for a moment that there will be a mega quake, we hesitate to rule out such a possibility altogether without scientific basis. Just because we have been lucky enough to be spared an earthquake of such magnitude for the last 200 years as the Minister has quoted, does not guarantee that it will not occur now or in the near future. While it is important for the minister to tell people not to panic, his dismissal of an earthquake of that scale occurring, we feel, is misplaced. Given that it is not possible to predict whether such an earthquake is imminent, or that it may occur after a few hundred years, the most prudent task for a country under risk would be to boost its preparedness for such a disaster.
What the minister should be telling the public is how prepared the nation is or needs to be for such a disaster should it occur. This includes training rescue teams, mobilizing volunteers, educating the public on survival skills, keeping adequate hospital staff to attend to the injured, enough ambulances, firefighting facilities etc. Only such contingency plans can reassure the public.