“Grateful to Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina of Bangladesh for announcing $1.5 million as contribution to the COVID-19 Emergency Fund,” he tweeted on Monday. The Indian premier said, “Through our solidarity and working together, we will overcome challenges posed by COVID-19.”
Prime Minister Modi’s remarks came a day after his Bangladesh counterpart Sheikh Hasina announced to contribute 1.5 million US dollar to the Covid-19 Emergency Fund to combat coronavirus that claimed over 16,500 lives so far and infected more than 3,75,000 globally.
Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi proposed creation of the fund during video conferencing with the SAARC (South Asian Association for Regional Cooperation) leaders recently. India committed to contribute $10m to the fund initially to fight against the deadly coronavirus.
Foreign Minister Dr A K Abdul Momen on Sunday told BSS that Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina verbally approved the fund in favour of SAARC secretariat to face health hazards due to outbreak of the coronavirus in South Asia.
He said the foreign ministry will send note verbal to SAARC secretariat and Indian government about Bangladesh’s commitment to provide USD 1.5 million to the SAARC health hazard prevention fund.
The minister said currently, this health hazard prevention SAARC fund will be used to combat Covid-19 but later it will be utilized to deal with preventing people of this region from other health risks.
Meanwhile, Nepal and Afghanistan declared to provide $1 million each and Maldives and Bhutan committed to offer 200,000 and 100,000 US dollars respectively to the fund.
(BSS)
