More than 20 horses have died of starvation in just one month at Bangladesh’s most popular resort district, the animals’ owners said recently, as the country’s tourism industry reels from the pandemic’s economic fallout. The horses’ owners said they were struggling to afford fodder for their animals, which are used for tourist rides at Cox’s Bazar beach – one of the world’s longest. “Once coronavirus hit, tourist numbers... sharply dropped to a trickle, ” Farida Begum, spokesperson of the Cox’s Bazar Horse Owners Association, said. But unless the tourists start arriving in Cox’s Bazar, I can’t pay back the money, ” Begum said, adding that she had borrowed 100, 000 taka (RM4, 950). “But no tourists means no income for us.”The government administrator for Cox’s Bazar, Sumaiya Akter, said she had only heard of four to five horses dying in the past eight months.

Source: The Star July 01, 2021 00:00 UTC