Prime minister Sheikh Hasina on Tuesday urged the International Organisation for Migration to search for new partners to increase the international fund for Rohingyas who have taken shelter in Bangladesh to escape persecution in Myanmar.

‘Since the assistance for Rohingyas has declined, the IOM should look for new partners to raise more funds for them,’ she said.

The PM made this call when IOM director general Amy Pope paid a courtesy call on her at the PM’s official residence Ganabhaban.

PM’s speechwriter Md Nazrul Islam briefed reporters after the meeting.

During the meeting, they discussed the UN joint response plan for the Rohingya humanitarian crisis as the international fund for supporting Rohingyas has significantly declined.

Hasina also asked IOM to help relocate more Rohingyas to Bhashanchar island from Cox’s Bazar camps as accommodation and livelihood facilities were there, including self-employment, education for their children, healthcare services and infrastructures for some 100,000 people in Bhashanchar.

Some 30,000-35,000 Rohingyas have already relocated to Bhashanchar from Cox’s Bazar camps.

The IOM director general who visited Cox’s Bazar Rohingya camps on Monday raised the security issue in the camps.

In this context, the prime minister said that conflict still continued in Myanmar and Rohingya people were also divided in different groups and sub-groups in the overcrowded camps in Cox’s Bazar. So, they were getting engaged in internal conflicts, she added.

Besides, the Rohingya people had outnumbered the host community in Cox’s Bazar. So, there are, conflicts for limited resources there, she said.

She, however, said adequate number of law enforcement agencies had been deployed to maintain the law and order in the Rohingya camps areas.