Khalid: Bangladesh drafting proposal on making sea routes safer

State Minister for Shipping Khalid Mahmud Chowdhury on Monday said Bangladesh, as a selected “Category C” member of the International Maritime Organization (IMO), is working on a proposal to make sea routes safer.

"We are working on a proposal to ensure that commercial ships can navigate safely through various crises at sea. This proposal will soon be sent to the IMO. If commercial ships can not operate during crises, it leads to increased prices and instability in the global market. The Department of Shipping is working on this type of proposal to enable merchant ships to navigate safely during crises. This is a time-consuming matter, but we are trying to prepare the proposal quickly."

The state minister was speaking with the journalists at his office in the Secretariat on the first working day after Eid-ul-Fitr.

He added: "Our main goal was to return the 23 sailors to the country safely, and we have been successful. Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina has always been vigilant about this issue. The Foreign Ministry, Department of Shipping, and International Maritime Law Practice Wing have worked on this. We were able to free the sailors quickly. This credit goes to Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina."

The state minister has denied the video footage circulated online where the ransom was carried in a bag to give the Somali pirates who held 23 MV Abdullah sailors hostage and said: "I do not know if this is a scene from a movie. We see such scenes in many movies. I do not know which image has been linked where, how it has been connected, or which one has been edited with another. I knew that discarded things were thrown into the water. I did not know that such valuable items were thrown into the water.”

Regarding the ship released from pirates heading towards Dubai, he said: “The ship will arrive in Dubai by Friday or Saturday. The whole matter is now a negotiation issue with the ship and the sailors. It depends on how long the sailors are contracted to stay and whether they will maintain their contract or not.

“However, the owners said something very good on Sunday. I heard that if they want, they will be brought back to Bangladesh by air. Plans are also possibly being made about who will replace them there."