Bangla Academy, Swadhinata and Ekushey Padak-winning veteran poet Nirmalendu Goon has threatened to sell out his gold medals after failing to get cooking gas from the national grid.
On a Facebook post on Tuesday, 77-year-old poet wrote that he managed to establish a power connection to his three-storey house built in Kamrangirchar on the outskirts of Dhaka in 2016.
“But I am yet to get a gas connection despite repeated attempts. So, I’m having to buy liquefied gas at high prices from the open market.”
“I'm thinking of selling two of the gold medals I received with the awards to bear this loss,” he wrote, referring to the Ekushey Padak he won in 2001 and the Independence Award, the highest civilian award given by the government 15 years later.
The 35-gram Ekushey medal is made of 18-carat gold, while the medal for the Independence Award weighs 50 grams. They come with certificates and prize money.
He asked the government to meet his demand in a month.
Titas Gas Transmission and Distribution Company said the government “permanently stopped” giving new residential and commercial gas connections.
“No matter how much you try, you're not getting connections now,” Harunur Rashid Mollah, managing director of Titas, told bdnews24.com.
The government suspended the provision for new gas connections in 2016 before making it permanent in 2020, he said. “However, some connections were given in the four intervening years.”
Nirmalendu Goon is one of the most prolific and versatile poets of Bangladesh. His poem "Swadhinata Ei Shobdoti Kivabe Elo (How did the word independence come about)" brought him huge fame. Apart from poems, his prose has also been widely appreciated.
