Editorial
Taking care of the unemployed and poor
A clear-cut strategy needed
World Bank Dhaka office's senior economist Zahid Hossain in a report titled 'Bangladesh: State of economy and policy response to the global economic crisis' released on Monday suggested that job creation in Bangladesh would have to be at least of the order of two million in place of one million required prior to global economic crisis.
That the export industries are confronted with the challenge of a degree of job-cut due to a reduction in their sale figures, both in volume and value, is too evident a fact not to be addressed in earnest. It is also obvious that we may have more of returnee migrants from overseas to be rehabilitated, as far as practicable, until such time as the effects of global recession have died down. The severely testing period is likely to last till end-2009.
Now what is the capacity of the local economy to generate the additional jobs? The Prime Minister is known to have asked the industry minister to try and reopen some of the closed down industries. How long it will take to re-commission them into viability may be difficult to predict at this stage. But as they kick off, a space for employment will be created almost instantaneously. Furthermore, the whole range of infrastructure development projects that are planned to be taken up under the new, ambitious ADP that is in the offing will provide employment opportunities. In the services sector and maintenance areas, a new scope is likely to emerge for absorption of labour. Simultaneously, support to small and medium enterprises (SMEs) and microcredit schemes devoted to self-employment, could expand the employment outreach. This is an area in which government-private-NGO partnership could yield ample dividends.
Unemployment or underemployment is only a part of the poverty phenomenon which is essentially far bigger and more endemic than mere joblessness. While over 40 percent of the people live below the poverty line, they can only subsist through the hard times if they are brought under the safety net programmes that the government, thankfully, has decided to go for.
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