Success achieved in poverty alleviation in greater Rangpur

from The New Nation

Huge success has been achieved through successful implementation of programmes by different organisations for creating income- generating opportunities to alleviate poverty in greater Rangpur in recent years, experts said.

They said cultivation of early variety high valued crops like maize, vegetables, fruits and spices, fish farming, setting up poultry farms, rearing cows and goats, and setting up of cottage and small industries, micro-credit activities, VGD and other programmes side by side with participatory social afforestation have brought the success.

Various government departments, dozens of NGOs, donor agencies like World Food Programme (WFP), Grameen Bank, USAID, RDRS, CARE, Bangladesh and other organisations implemented the programmes. The situation is expected to improve further within the next couple of years as these programmes are running successfully to eradicate poverty.

Hundreds of people of the river erosion and flood-prone areas of 28 Upazilas in Rangpur, Nilphamari, Lalmonirhat, Gaibandha and Kurigram have now changed their fates and achieved self-reliance as a result of the programmes.

They said that these programmes have been proved to be the most effective for eradicating poverty of the thousands of poor families and more success could be achieved through ensuring accountability of the administrations and government departments involved with running the development activities.

Sources said intensity of the century-old seasonal job crisis that repeats every year creating untold sufferings to the jobless farm workers during the lean season came down to a tolerable extent last year.

This suggests improvement of situation in the region and it has become possible for tremendous poverty alleviation activities being conducted. It has also created mass awareness among the poor about the reasons of poverty. As a result, the abject poverty situation is disappearing faster from the area, they added.

The urban and rural people said that it has become very difficult to get a female domestic help as almost all the children are now going to schools even in the remote Char areas where people were living under abject poverty even some years ago.

The process of poverty eradication would be accelerated further if the government-run programmes being conducted by various departments were completed timely without misappropriations and irregularities, experts said.

They suggested for forming powerful committees comprising honest people of the society to monitoring the development activities being conducted by various government departments including the LGED, WDB, Roads and Highways, PWD, Education Engineering Department, Education Department to root out corruptions of the past.