Even as Bangladesh’s Environment, Forests and Climate Change Adviser Syeda Rizwana Hasan has met with little success on policy initiatives in her own ministry, she has the unenviable record of being the first among Mohammad Yunus’s 16-member advisory council to visit Pakistan.
Rizwana Hasan also holds concurrent charge of the Water Resources Ministry.
She is the first Bangladeshi adviser to visit Pakistan. None of her other colleagues on the Advisory Council has visited Pakistan since August 8, 2024, when Yunus took charge as head of the interim regime. Pakistani ministers, bureaucrats and senior military officers have, however, visited Bangladesh.
Official documents accessed by Northeast News show that Hasan, who was at the centre of a storm a few months ago when it was revealed that Bangladesh’s stone mafia had laid bare the banks of Dholai River in Bholaganj, Sylhet, of the famed “white stones”, was on a three-day visit to Pakistan beginning November 4.
While the visit was till November 7, Rizwana Hasan, her husband Abu Bakar Siddique and three other relatives prolonged their sojourn in Islamabad before returning to Dhaka in the wee hours of November 10.
Traveling on a diplomatic passport (No. D00017713), Rizwana Hasan’s official business was to attend a conference on ‘Sustainable Development in the Emerging World Disorder’, for which she was a “distinguished speaker” on November 4.
On November 6, she was the “session chair” for a discussion on ‘Advancing SDG 7 in the Hindu Kush Himalaya: Climate Resilient Renewable Energy, Regional Cooperation and Pathway’.
While there is nothing on record to suggest what Rizwana Hasan may have spoken about during the course of the two sessions, official documents show that the Institute for Global Environmental Strategies (IGES) is based in Kanagawa, Japan.
Now, even as she was on an official visit, the airfares for Rizwana Hasan and her relatives appear to have been borne by IGES. “If any additional expenses arise during the period of participation in line with her official entitlements, such costs may be met from the Cabinet Division’s budget”.
Besides, an official order issued by Rizwana Hasan’s ministry says that “she will not stay abroad beyond the approved period, except for necessary travel time”.
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And yet, immigration records show that Rizwana Hasan, her husband the three relatives landed at Dhaka’s Hazrat Shah Jalal International Airport from a Qatar Airlines flight (No. QR-638), indicating that she traveled from Islamabad to Doha before reaching Dhaka.
