To Editor:
Daily Star.

Dear Editor,

I wanted to bring to your attention the wide outrage that has been caused among the NRB experts on energy sector by recent series by Shehrier Khan on Asia Energy and its proposed open pit coal mining methods. While going to the source in a foreign land and doing fact finding is indeed a fresh change in news reporting in deshi print media, the people involved in this area with extensive research have found this report to be shockingly onesided.

As highlighted on my piece in Forum this month, the role of BEN (Bangladesh Environment Network) in forming key environmental movement via BAPA has been path setting. This organization with its experts spread worldwide on highly reputed organizations on energy and environmental issues add a lot of weight to the exisiting discussion that is happening surrounding energy issues in Bangladesh. They recently produced a full coal policy highlighted in the op-ed in your paper . Most of the members in the group found it appalling that such an important piece which got front page treatment completely fails to cover the major reservations against the open pit coal mining.

I have read several of Shehrier’s pieces before and found them to be quite thorough. However, thre recent pieces are problematic in several fronts. (more…)