Bangladesh to be beat poverty by 2020, pledges prime minister

Oct 17, 2009, 14:42 GMT

Dhaka - Bangladesh Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina Wazed promised on Saturday that her impoverished and densely-populated South Asian country would be free of poverty and hunger by 2020.

'We will celebrate our golden jubilee of independence in 2021 as a poverty free-nation,' the prime minister said while addressing a rally in the capital, Dhaka, to mark International Day for the Eradication of Poverty.

Hasina called upon all parties to support and stabilise the country's democracy - which she said was the prime weapon in eradicating poverty.

The premier said Bangladesh's all-pervasive corruption was the primary enemy of development, in her resource-constrained country.

'Assets have limitations. So when one plunders, the other becomes poor. But we do not want to see that. We want to ensure equal distribution of wealth and rights,' Hasina said vowing to fight corruption to make the nation hunger-free.

She asked all to unite beyond political ideologies saying, 'Let's save lives of the poor people and ensure a better living for them.'

The country of around 153 million people, Bangladesh is lagging behind the United Nations Millennium Development Goal of halving poverty by 2015.

Twenty per cent of people in Bangladesh live in acute poverty while one in three is poor, the Secretary General of the Anti-Poverty Campaign National Committee Shishir Shil said.

He added that national unity among political forces in Bangladesh would help eliminate poverty.

Khaleda Zia, the leader of the main opposition party, has been scheduled to jointly launch the nation-wide anti-poverty rally, but backed out at the last minute accusing Hasina's Awami League-led alliance government of being repressive.