Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina on Sunday said the education in the country will be made fully free for all in the future if the economy gets better.
“No one will be excluded from educational facilities as it’s the duty of the state to ensure education for all …the resource constraint is the only problem,” she said.The Prime Minister said this while handing over stipend money at her office to the girl students of degree and equivalent level from the newly-constituted ‘Prime Minister’s Education Trust Fund’.
Sheikh Hasina said the main goal of her government is to build an educated nation as without education the desired development is not possible. “Educated citizens are the soldiers for building the nation an education nation can stand in the international community with its head high,” she said.
The Prime Minister said a total of 133,276 female students are initially being provided with stipend from the Trust Fund and this number will be raised in the future. “Stipends will also be given to male students in phases.”
In this connection, the premier said her government is thinking of providing tax waiver for donating money to the Trust Fund.
Hasina said her government is implementing various programmes giving highest priority to the education sector in the national budget to ensure the continuation of studies of the poor and meritorious students.
As per its election pledges, she said, her government is providing free textbooks up to secondary level and stipends to the poor and meritorious students up to degree level.
Hasina said the remission of tuition fee for the girl students up to degree level was another election pledge of the present government.
To make the stipend programme sustainable, the PM said her government has constituted a trust fund instead of depending on development budget of the government.
The Prime Minister’s Education Trust Fund has been set up with Tk 1,000 crore seed money so that the programme could be continued even after the change of the government.
With the successful implementation of the programme a new chapter on the overall development of the country would be ushered in through the spread of female education and their empowerment, Hasina said. She said her government wants to introduce such a system so that all the students up to degree level could get stipend and no poor student is excluded for various barriers.
“The journey to this end has just begun,” she said, hoping that the Prime Minister’s Education Trust Fund will grow bigger with the joint collaboration of government and private initiatives in the future.
Sheikh Hasina said in the past many commitments had been made for the development of the education but what her government did over the last four and a half years, no one could do that in the last 42 years.
Soon after the country’s independence, Father of the Nation Bangabandhu Sheikh Mujibur Rahman had taken an epoch-making step for the development of education nationalising 36,165 primary schools along with their 155,000 teachers, Hasina said.
She said her government is pledge-bound to materialise the dream of the Father of the Nation for building a poverty- and hunger-free Bangladesh and has been working relentlessly to turn the country’s huge population into human resources through providing them science-based and pragmatic and practical education.
In January this year, Hasina said, her government announced to nationalise 26,200 primary schools with 104,000 teachers and employees in phases.
Earlier, the Prime Minister handed over the stipend money to 15 degree-level female students from various university and colleges across the country.
Chaired by Education Minister Nurul Islam Nahid, the function was also addressed by Planning Minister AK Khandaker.
-With The Independent input
