The government targets to cut unemployment and underemployment by 50 per cent and the poverty headcount by two-thirds by 2030 under a draft post-2015 development agenda.
The Planning Commission has already framed a draft of the country’s post-2015 development agenda which the United Nations may adopt after the 2015 deadline for achieving the Millennium Development Goals expires, revealed the commission at a roundtable on ‘MDGs momentum in Bangladesh: 1,000 days of action’ organised by it in conjunction with the United Nations Development Programme at a Dhaka hotel on Thursday.
The draft also has set a target to reduce the employment in informal sectors by 50 per cent in the post-MDG period.
According to the findings of the Labour Force Survey-2010 conducted by the Bangladesh Bureau of Statistics, 4.5 per cent, or 26 lakh, of the country’s labour force are unemployment, meaning none of them can secure a one-hour job in a week.
But the real rate of unemployment will be much higher, if disguised unemployed or underemployed people are included in the pool of jobless people.
‘Although Bangladesh has made significant progress towards achieving the MDGs, the unemployment and underemployment rates are still very high, especially among the young people aged 15 to 24,’ said Planning Commission’s General Economics Division member Shamsul Alam.
The government will pay serious attention to this issue in the post-2015 development agenda, besides addressing it in the 1,000 days to the MDG achievement deadline, Shamsul said.
Dhaka in the draft has identified six thematic areas and set nine goals as its post-2015 development agenda which will be placed before the UN secretary general before September 2013.
Economists and development activists in the roundtable said Bangladesh should attach the highest priorities to reducing unemployment, increasing development expenditures, ensuring adequate nutrition, and improving the quality of education till the end of 2015 to achieve the yet unfulfilled MDGs.
Palli Karma Sahayak Foundation chairman Quzi Kholiquzzaman Ahmad said the government should ensure the quality of primary and secondary school education.
Policy Research Institute executive director Ahsan H Mansur said the government should ensure the quality of development expenditures made under the national budget.
Former caretaker government adviser Rasheda K Chowdhury, UNDP South and West Asia Region chief Elena Tischenko, UNDP Bangladesh country director Pauline Tamesis, Bangladesh Institute of Development Studies research director M Asaduzzaman, UNDP assistant country directors KAM Morshed and Palsah Kanti Das, Human Rights and Legal Aid Services director Faustina Pereira, and Manzoor Hasan, a barrister, among others, also took part in the discussion.
-With New Age input
