Bangladesh is expected to be a poverty-free country by the year of 2021. To this end a roadmap titled ‘One House One Farm Project’ has been placed before the top policy makers of the government. According to this road map, there will be not a single poor family in Bangladesh after 2021. Not only the poverty of those under the poverty line will be alleviated, if anybody comes below the poverty line afresh, they will also be retrieved. For this, an amount of Tk 5162 crore will be spent.
The director of One House One Farm project Dr. Prasanto Kumar Roy on March 12 placed this roadmap before the secretaries of different ministries including cabinet secretary Mosharraf Hossain Bhuiyan, principal secretary at the Prime Minister’s Office (PMO) Md. Abul Kalam Azad, senior secretary of public administration ministry Dr. Kamal Abdul Naser Chowdhury and rural development secretary MA Kader.
On behalf of the government, a strategy paper is being prepared to eradicate poverty by 2022 through implementation of social security scheme. The execution of the strategy paper will begin from next year.
About the roadmap, Proshanto Kumar Roy said “Although many programmes were undertaken for poverty alleviation over the last 40 years, those failed to attain the desired goal.” At present, 4 crore people of about 80 lakh families constituting 24 percent of the country’s total population are living below the poverty line. Around 25 lakh families will come under the first and second phases of the project. It will be possible to build poverty-free Bangladesh before 2021 by bringing the remaining 25 lakh poor families under the poverty alleviation programme.
The likely beneficiaries of the national poverty alleviation roadmap (2010-2020) have been estimated at over one crore families. Through the “One House One Farm project,” poverty of 24.26 lakh families was eradicated during the period from 2010 to 2014. The third phase aimed at elevating 25 lakh families of 41,000 villages to above poverty line in 2015-2017 period. Tk 1,000 crore has been earmarked for this. In the fourth phase, the poverty of 25 lakh more families in 41,000 villages will be alleviated during the period of 2016-2018 at a similar cost. And, in the fifth and final phase, the remaining families of 1.20 lakh villages will be brought under the project.
