Published: 00:29, Apr 09,2019
Cox’s Bazar-based writer and poet Manik Bairagi speaks at a
programme launching and storybook sharing event organised by Room to
Read at a hotel in Cox’s Bazar on Monday. — New Age photo
Displaced Rohingya children, living at Cox’s Bazar refugee camps, are going to have an opportunity to develop their learning skills by reading juvenile stories in English and Burmese languages, disclosed officers of Room to Read Bangladesh during a discussion in the district on Monday.
Executives of the international NGO also said that 10 such bilingual books with colourful illustrations and interesting fairy tales and moral stories would soon be distributed among estimated 1.4 lakh Rohingya children at 1,116 centres as supplementary reading materials for enhancing their learning skills.
‘At each centres, we will provide 15 sets of these books,’ Saidus Saklaen, senior programme manager of quality reading materials of Room to Read said the discussion at a hotel.
He said that the books were written following need-based assessments of the children and teachers at the centres where they operate programmes funded by UNICEF and in collaboration with Cox’s Bazar Education Sector, a platform of NGOs providing elementary teaching facilities to Rohingya children.
‘These books will not only help develop English and Burmese reading skills but also contribute to overcoming their trauma during repression in Myanmar,’ he said.
An estimated 1,80,000 Rohingya children are taught at over 3,300 centres operated by NGOs in Cox’s Bazar, Refugee Relief and Repatriation commissioner Mohammad Abul Kalam said.
Room to Read officers at the discussion programme on Monday said that the displaced children were facing problems while taking education at the centres for communication problem and scarcity of quality teachers.
They said that the children speak in Rohingya language which did not have any alphabet while the government of Bangladesh set guidelines for teaching them only in Burmese and English at the centres.
The books with quality illustrations and storylines would help them to overcome the problem, they hoped.
They also said that they had picked 10 Bangladeshi writers of different age groups to write the stories which were later translated into English by Shafi Ahmed, a retired professor of Jahangirnagar University, and into Burmese by Nurul Alam, a Bangladeshi who studied at Yangun University in Myanmar.
The English titles of the books are Prince the Hunter, Quick! Quick!, Mila and the Red Hen, I want to Grow, Neighbour, Magical Basket, Who Yawns, Trivati and Kaladan, Dhan Katar Gaan and Heave Ho Haiyo.
The representatives of the British Council, BRAC, Plan International, Muslim Aid, Dhaka Ahsania Mission and others gave their observations regarding the issue.
Room to Read’s programme operations director Md Badruzzaman said that the logical suggestions would be incorporated in the publications.
Praising the initiative, UNICEF Bangladesh education specialist Mourie Nishad Choudhury said their support would continue.
More than 7,00,000 Rohingyas, mostly women, children and aged people, entered Bangladesh after fleeing unbridled murder, arson and rape during ‘security operations’ by Myanmar military in Rakhine, what the United Nations denounced as ethnic cleansing and genocide, beginning from August 25, 2017.
The ongoing Rohingya influx took the number of undocumented Myanmar nationals and registered refugees in Bangladesh to about 11,16,000, according to estimates by UN agencies and Bangladesh foreign ministry.
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