News stories by Rafiqul Islam, page 2

RANGAMATI, Mar 22 (IPS) - Just a few years ago, Sudarshana Chakma (35), a resident of the remote Digholchari Debarmatha village under Bilaichari upazila in the Rangamati Hill District, had to traverse a long hilly path to fetch water for her household because there were no local water sources.

THAKURGAON, Bangladesh, Feb 06 (IPS) - After passing her secondary school certificate (SCC) in 2019, Sweety Akter went door-to-door to collect money to enroll in a college, but she wasn't successful.

PATUAKHALI, BANGLADESH, Jan 10 (IPS) - In the past, Salma Begum, 40, lost her crops every year due to natural disasters. She lives with her five-member family in Ashabaria village under Rangabali upazila, a remote coastal island in Patuakhali district.

DHAKA, Nov 07 (IPS) - Since her childhood, Parveen Begum, 52, has been adding extra salt while eating her meals. However, she did not know that this contributed to high blood pressure.

DHAKA, Jun 27 (IPS) - With the monsoon in Bangladesh, Rohingya refugee camps in Cox's Bazar have emerged as a dengue hotspot, with the mosquito-borne disease continuing to spread among the stateless refugees.

KHULNA, Bangladesh, Sep 23 (IPS) - Like many other women in Bangladesh's salinity-prone coastal region, Lalita Roy had to travel a long distance every day to collect drinking water as there was no fresh water source nearby her locality.

DHAKA, Aug 01 (IPS) - Ziaur Rahman, a farmer of Pakuar Char under Sariakandi Upazila in Bogura, cultivated jute on a newly emerged river island (char) in the Brahmaputra River, but this year’s flood washed away his crop.

DHAKA, Jun 28 (IPS) - After losing everything in the recent devastating flood that swept the northeastern districts in Bangladesh, pregnant mother Joynaba Akter, her three children and her husband took refuge in a shelter centre at Gowainghat in Sylhet.

TANGAIL, Bangladesh, Jul 07 (IPS) - When the Bangladesh Forest Department felled Basanti Rema’s banana orchard, Rema, a Garo indigenous forest-dweller of Madhupur Forest, felt she was living a nightmare.

Rema, from Pegmari village in Madhupur, Tangail district, had cultivated the banana plants on half an acre in the Madhupur Forest. But the Forest Department claimed that the land on which the bananas were cultivated belonged to the department. 

DHAKA, Jun 30 (IPS) - Rani Akter, a mother of five, usually works as a domestic helper in Dhaka’s Zikatola area. When the coronavirus pandemic broke out in Bangladesh last March, her employers asked her not to come to their homes for fear of infection.

“I lost my work in three houses one after the other, which became a nightmare for me. My rich employers did not allow me in their homes as they thought that I might carry the invisible virus,” Akter told IPS.