Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina on Saturday defended her government's decision to construct a controversial India-funded power plant near Sundarbands, the world's largest mangrove forests which straddle both Bangladesh and India.

Despite warnings from activists of environmental costs, at a press briefing on the coal-fired plant's environmental impacts on the forest, the Bangladeshi premier Saturday justified her government's decision to go ahead with nearly 1.50 billion U.S. dollars power project at any cost.

About the environmental risks cited by environmental groups and ex-Prime Minister Khaleda Zia at the latest, Hasina said that the 1,320-megawatt "Ultra Super-critical Power Plant," the construction site of which is about 14 kilometers away from the Sundarbans, will be developed with cutting-edge eco-friendly technologies.

"It won't hamper the world's largest mangrove forest," she claimed and added "the plant would rather come as a bless for Sundarbans as people's dependency on the forests for their livelihoods will reduce because it will create employment opportunities for them."

In the press conference, Hasina showed photographs of many major coal-powered plants established in forests and cities in different countries to assert the anti-power plant campaign was a mere propaganda of vested interest groups.

Some 70 percent of the project cost would reportedly be covered by the Indian Exim Bank as a loan, and the rest by the governments of Bangladesh and India.

Source : XINHUA