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BSS-13
PM-COOPERATIVE-POVERTY-2 LAST DHAKA
Sheikh Hasina, also president of the Awami League, said her government has been working untiringly to implement the “Amar Bari, Amar Gram” project to ensure civic amenities in every village so that the villagers could get an improved and beautiful life in line with her party’s election manifesto of 2018.
The Prime Minister said they have already started implementing a pilot project of building 10 Bangabandhu Model Villages with all civic amenities, including sanitation, pure drinking water and healthcare services, in line with the Father of the Nation’s cooperatives thought.
“We hope that you will make the initiative successful so that we can develop each village on the basis of it,” she urged the concerned people.
Sheikh Hasina recalled her visit of two model villages in the UK with her father Bangabandhu Sheikh Mujibur Rahman in 1969, saying that Bangabandgu at that time told that he wanted to make the villages of Bangladesh like the model villages of the UK once the country becomes independent.
She said Bangabandhu gave second most priority to the cooperatives so that the people of the villages get improved life and the youth folk get jobs and for this reason he (Bangabandhu) wanted to formulate a policy to decide how to ensure marketing the goods produced by the cooperatives and how the share of its profits would be distributed.
But the Father of the Nation could not do that as he along with most of his family members were assassinated on August 15 in 1975, she said, adding that the post-1975 government did nothing in this regard rather gobbled up everything of the cooperatives through illegal means.
After resuming office in 1996, she said, the Awami League government undertook various measures for revival of the cooperative movement, following the footsteps of Father of the Nation Bangabandhu Sheikh Mujibur Rahman, such as building different establishments and enacting necessary laws.
The Father of the Nation had undertaken a project, ‘Cooperative Dairy Project’, in 1973 to set up milk processing factories in five milk producing areas mainly to meet nutritional demands of the people, she said, adding, “Today’s ‘Milk Vita’ is the outcome of Bangabandhu’s far-reaching initiatives.”
Briefly highlighting her government’s initiatives, the PM said that they established the Bangabandhu Poverty Alleviation Training Complex in 1997 and later transformed the training center into a full-fledged academy by enacting a law in 2012.
She further added that the government formulated the Rural Poverty Alleviation Foundation Act, 1999.
The government has formulated the Co-operative Societies Act-2001 and the National Co-operative Policy, 2012, she said, adding that then the government re-enacted the Cooperative Societies (Amendment) Act, 2013 and the Bangladesh Rural Development Board Act, 2018.
Referring to the fresh surge of Covid-19 in the European countries, the Prime Minister called upon all to remain cautious about the lethal virus and follow the health guidelines properly as it would become more dangerous with the increase of cold as winter has already set in.
BSS/AHJ/GA/1448 hrs