Karachi, 08 September 2022:

Bangladesh Deputy High Commissioner in Karachi, S. M. Mahbubul Alam had a courtesy call on Professor Dr. Khalid Mahmood Iraqi, Vice-Chancellor of Karachi University today. Few other academicians including Professor M. Saleem Memon, Director, Shah Abdul Latif Bhitai Chair, Professor Dr. Nabeel Ahmad Zubairi, Director, Evening Program, Professor Dr. Abdul Waheed, Registrar and Professor Dr. M. Abu Tayyub Khan, Head of Bengali Department, Karachi University among others were present during the meeting.

During the meeting and interaction, the Deputy High Commissioner S. M. Mahbubul Alam highlighted the distinguished academicians of Karachi University about various development initiatives and sectoral 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 the 6.15-kilometer-long Padma Bridge by her own finance, which is a symbol of her pride and confidence.

Deputy High Commissioner also appraised the renowned academicians of Karachi University that Bangladesh is now among the five fastest growing economies in the world, ranking 41st 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 USD2,227. He added that Bangladesh has made impressive progress in 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, he added. 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 further briefed the academicians of Karachi University on 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 among around 45 million students 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 13 million children currently enrolled in the program directly to the mobile banking accounts to around 10 million mothers.  

Deputy High Commissioner S. M. Mahbubul Alam further briefed that by dint 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 78 percent, which was only 18 percent in 1971, 49.6 percent in 2002, and 58.6 percent in 2014. He further added that in Bangladesh currently there are around 160 universities including 53 public universities, 103 private universities, 2 international universities, and 2 special universities but the number of universities in Bangladesh was only less than eight in 1971. 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 and 70 private medical colleges producing over 10,000 doctors each year. He commented that the statistics and the success stories reflect how much Bangladesh has progressed in the five decades since her independence in 1971.

During the meeting and interaction, the prominent academicians of Karachi University highly appreciated the socio-economic developments in Bangladesh including the impressive development in women empowerment, literacy rate, higher education, digitization, and science and technology. The innovative and far reaching policies of Bangladesh helped to achieve her development goals. During the discussion they expressed their willingness for any possibility of enhanced collaboration in research and sharing of experience with Bangladeshi universities. The academicians of Karachi University also talked about any possible MoU with relevant university or department of Bangladeshi university for wider cooperation, exchange and collaboration in education and research. Deputy High Commission in Karachi S. M. Mahbubul Alam assured the academicians to extend all possible cooperation for collaboration in research between University in Bangladesh and the Karachi University.