PM begins Barishal visit with tree plantation, Family Card distribution

Highlights

• Tarique Rahman makes his first official Barishal visit as prime minister.
• Thousands welcome his motorcade across the Gournadi–Barishal route.
• No banners or welcome arches are displayed, following the prime minister’s directive.
• Tarique inaugurates the tree plantation programme by planting coconut and neem saplings.
• Tarique distributes Family Cards before attending the BNP organisational meeting.

Prime Minister Tarique Rahman arrived in Barishal this morning (13 July) on his first official visit to the division since assuming office, where he launched a tree plantation programme, distributed Family Cards among beneficiaries.

The prime minister left his Gulshan residence by road around 6am and reached Gournadi at around 9:50am. Information and Broadcasting Minister and Barishal-1 MP Zahir Uddin Swapon, along with local party leaders, received him. 

BNP leaders, activists and supporters lined both sides of the road in Gournadi and along the 34-kilometre route to Barishal city, greeting the Prime Minister as his motorcade passed. 

No welcome arches, banners or festoons were erected along the route in line with the prime minister’s directive.

Around 10am, Tarique Rahman inaugurated a tree plantation programme along the banks of the newly re-excavated Sarikal-Batajor Canal in Batajor union of Gournadi upazila.

Launching the programme, he urged people to take care of the saplings to ensure their survival.

“Planting the sapling is not the end of the job. Around 2,500 saplings will be planted today. Everyone must take care of the trees,” he said.

“You look after your children every day after they are born. In the same way, you must care for these young saplings every day,” the prime minister added.

The canal, which flows past Batajor Bazar, is locally known as the Batajor Canal. It joins the Sarikal River east of the market before flowing into the Miar Char River.

After inaugurating the programme, the Prime Minister proceeded to Batajor to distribute Family Cards among women heads of beneficiary families.

Later in the day, Tarique Rahman is scheduled to inaugurate another tree plantation programme along the Sagardi Canal near the Trish Godown Martyred Intellectuals Memorial in Barishal city before attending an organisational meeting of the BNP at the Barishal District Shilpakala Academy.

He is expected to return to Dhaka in the evening.