Prices of electricity, water will be based on area, income: PM

Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina has said that prices of electricity and water will be based on area and income.

The Prime Minister said this while chairing the last ECNEC meeting of the present government held at the NEC Conference Room in city’s Sher-e-Bangla Nagar area on Thursday.

Briefing the reporters after the meeting, Planning Minister MA Mannan said that the Premier had asked the authorities concerned to come out from the tendency of providing subsidies primarily on some key utility services like electricity and water.

The Planning Minister said the Prime Minister in the meeting had suggested for fixing charges or fees on such utilities according to area-wise, income-wise and family-wise perspective.

Answering to a question, Mannan said this is still an initial thought by the Premier while related experts would work on it further to make the concerned charges and fees more justified.

Sheikh Hasina also underscored the need for having low lying areas on both sides of the highways so that rain water could be drained out from the roads and highways to those areas and thus the highways would not be damaged.

He said that the Premier put emphasis on conducting massive publicity among the common people on the benefits of the Universal Pension Scheme so that they could avail these in large numbers.