Karachi, 11 January 2023:

Deputy High Commissioner of Bangladesh in Karachi S. M. Mahbubul Alam addressed the students and academicians of ILMA University in Karachi at the University Auditorium. Around 150 Students of different faculties and departments of the ILMA University were present at the lecture session.  Vice-Chancellor of ILMA University Professor Dr. Mansoor uz Zafar Dawood, Dean of the Faculty of Media Science and Design Professor Dr. Yasmeen Sultana, Dean of Research Institute of ILMA University, Director of Quality Assurance and Liaison Mr. Fawwad Mahmood Butt, Deputy Director, Quality Assurance and Liaison Ms. Sajida Qureshi and other faculty members of the University were among others present during the address by the Deputy High Commissioner. 

Deputy High Commissioner S. M. Mahbubul Alam briefed the distinguished academicians and the promising students of ILMA University on various development initiatives and sectorial achievements in Bangladesh. He said that Bangladesh has become a ‘Role Model’ of socio-economic development in the world. He shared the success stories of socio-economic progress in Bangladesh in different sectors and cited as an example that Bangladesh has constructed and inaugurated on 25 June 2022 the 6.15-kilometer-long Padma Bridge by her own finance, which is a symbol of her pride and confidence. He mentioned that Bangladesh has inaugurated the BDT330 billion project of Metro Rail in Dhaka on 28 December 2022. He further mentioned that Bangladesh is currently among the five fastest growing economies in the world, ranking 35^th in terms of GDP. Over the past decade, poverty rate in Bangladesh reduced from 31.5 percent 20.5 percent and per capita income reached to more than threefold in just one decade to USD2,824, which was less then USD100 in 1971. He added that Bangladesh has made impressive progress in education, and women empowerment. He cited that according to WEF, Bangladesh is ranked seventh in the world in terms of political empowerment of women. The ‘Digital Bangladesh’ initiative has stimulated transformative impacts on socio-economic development, education, disaster risk reduction, and women’s empowerment. The heavy investment in women’s advancement and empowerment contributed to Bangladesh’s transformative development. He also shared the vision that the present government of Bangladesh has been striving hard to turn Bangladesh into a developed country by 2041.

Deputy High Commissioner highlighted the progress in education sector in particular and mentioned that the government of Bangladesh has been distributing free textbooks for pre-primary to secondary level students since 2010 and celebrate a nation-wide ‘Book Festival’ on 1^st January each year. He elaborated that Government has distributed around 400 million copies of textbooks in 2022 and 2023 each among around 45 million students each year in pre-primary, primary, secondary, ebtedayee, dakhil, vocational, SSC vocational, ethnic minority groups and visually challenged students across the country. He commented that distribution of free text books in Bangladesh in such a massive scale is a unique program in education across the globe.

He also highlighted that the Government of Bangladesh runs a stipend program titled ‘Primary Education Stipend Program (PESP)’, which has the key objective to increase educational participation—enrollment, attendance, persistence, and performance—of primary-school-age children from poor families in urban and rural areas. The program provides a stipend per month per child to mothers in need of financial support, conditional on their child’s school attendance since 2001. Again, since June 2017, the government of Bangladesh took initiative to transfer the stipends for nearly 15 million children currently enrolled in the program directly to the mobile banking accounts to around 10 million mothers. The government has been taking initiative for lunch at the secondary level.   

Deputy High Commissioner S. M. Mahbubul Alam further briefed that by virtue of the various initiatives by the government including distribution of free textbooks, provision of stipends, mid-day meal, development of school infrastructure, recruitment of adequate teachers and so on in order to increase enrollment, prevent dropouts and ensure quality education, currently the primary enrollment rate is over 98 percent, which is a success story of Bangladesh in education. Currently the literacy rate of Bangladesh is around 80 percent, which was only 18 percent in 1971, 49.6 percent in 2002, and 58.6 percent in 2014. He further added in 1971 there wee only 5 universities in Bangladesh whereas currently there are 172 universities including 55 public universities and two international universities in Bangladesh. The number of medical colleges in Bangladesh were also less than seven in 1971, whereas currently there are over 112 medical colleges in Bangladesh including 37 public medical colleges producing over 10,000 doctors each year.

Deputy High Commissioner also focused on different mega projects and other success stories in Bangladesh such as the establishment of 100 SEZs, Bangabandhu Satilitte-1, Ruppoor Nuclear Power Plant, and Bangabandhu Tunnel under Karnaphuli River, Metro Rail in Dhaka city, Deep Sea Port, and Graduation of Bangladesh from LDC and so forth. He mentioned that Bangladesh has provided temporary shelter to over 1.1 million forcibly displaced people of Myanmar. He mentioned that Bangladesh is a peace-loving country and has been pursuing the foreign policy of “Friendship to all and malice towards none” since her Independence in 1971 as was postulated by the Father of the Nation Bangabandhu Sheikh Mujibur Rahman, which continues to provide the philosophical underpinning of Bangladesh’s pro-peace foreign policy. He further mentioned that Father of the Nation, who received the Prestigious Julio-Curie Peace Prize in 1973, propounded the peace and development-centric foreign policy. Deputy High Commissioner commented that the statistics and the success stories reflect how much Bangladesh has progressed in the five decades since her independence in 1971.

During interaction and Q&A Session, the prominent academicians and students of ILMA University were impressed to know the success stories and development model of Bangladesh. They all highly appreciated the socio-economic developments in Bangladesh including the impressive development in women empowerment, literacy rate, higher education, digitization, and science and technology. During the discussion they expressed their willingness for any possibility of enhanced collaboration in research and sharing of experience with Bangladeshi universities. They expressed their opinion that such sessions would definitely help them to understand better the “Peaceful Rise of Bangladesh” and the “Development Model of Bangladesh” and to dispel the misperception.