Education in Bangladesh
Posted by Stephen Timms, MP for East Ham, at 13:24, Thu 19 October 2006:
At the beginning of October, I visited Bangladesh. It is a beautiful country with very friendly people – and many people in East London have roots there.
I was accompanied on my visit by Anwar Choudhury, the British High Commissioner to Bangladesh. He came to the UK from Bangladesh at age eight. Living with his family in Manor Park, he did A-levels at Newham College, working in a restaurant in Barking Road to help pay the bills. He worked for Plessey in Ilford and then joined the civil service. In May 2004 he was appointed High Commissioner. Just before he took up the post, he came to a meeting I arranged at East Ham Town Hall, to discuss his plans with the community.
A few weeks after his appointment, Anwar was the victim of a terrorist bomb attack in Bangladesh. His bodyguard and two other people were killed. Anwar himself suffered serious leg injuries and spent six weeks in hospital. After that, however, he returned to his job. And he is doing a brilliant job representing Britain.
The aim of my visit was to see how Britain can help with development. In 2000, the whole world signed up to a set of targets – called the Millennium Development Goals – for tackling poverty around the world. They included ensuring that, by 2015, every child should be able to complete primary education; the number of people living in absolute poverty should be reduced by half; and everyone should have access to clean water. The Goals are ambitious, but they are also possible.
At the Gleneagles G8 summit last year, chaired by Tony Blair, the developed countries promised a big increase in aid, to help make the goals a reality. For example, to contribute towards every child being able to complete primary education, Britain has pledged $15 billion in additional aid over the next ten years.
I particularly wanted to see how we can help with education. I met the Bangladeshi education minister, Osman Farruk. Outside the capital, Dhaka, we visited a small, one-roomed school, run by a charity called BRAC, with one teacher. There are over 30,000 schools like this in Bangladesh.
Most children in Bangladesh start primary school, but a third drop out before finishing. Many have to start work at primary school age, to get money to buy food. Their parents do not earn enough to support them. One idea we considered was: with help from extra funding from the British government, could primary school children be given a free lunch? If so, many would be able to attend school instead of working. This idea will be developed further by officials from the UK Department for International Development who are based in Bangladesh.
Relations between Britain and Bangladesh are very close. I hope we can help ensure that every child in Bangladesh gets the benefit of a full primary school education.
Comments
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Posted by Andy Roberts, 14:04, Thu 19 October 2006: (Is this post abusive?) #
Hello Stephen, thanks for sending out these four messages as a way of communicating something about what you do. I've written to the Newham Issues forum to see if it would be appropriate to also forward them there in future.
I'm not sure I'm convinced about the concept of developed and developing countries. Isn't it the case that for every pound donated as aid in one direction, several pounds are extracted back in the opposite direction through adverse terms of trade?
Posted by Stephen Timms, 13:02, Mon 6 November 2006: (Is this post abusive?) #
"Hello Andy - thank you for your encouragement and in particular replying to my post on Bangladesh. Clearly Aid on its own is not the complete answer to seeing "developing" countries lifted out of poverty. That's why the Government has put so much emphasis on a package of measures in this area, including debt cancellation, aid, reforming corporate governance and the desire to see an end to unfair trade rules, which often mean that the very countries which need to be able to trade freely the most are unfairly penalised in the global marketplace.
For there to be a long term and sustainable solution then we need to keep working to ensure that free trade is fair and that fair trade is free. On your point about adverse terms of trade, while we certainly need to make trade fair, its hard to see how we would be able to make progress without aid for quite a long time still to come."