HAKA, Jan. 31, Reuter: Two Bangladeshis in five have no job of any kind. Only one in five of the 15 million people expected to join the rural work force in this desperately poor and largely agricultural country in the next 15 years will find a job.
Planning Minister, A.K. Khandaker, Gihese figures at a seminar here yesterday, said that at the end of last year 12,260,000 people out of a work force of 30 million were totally unemployed, 80 per cent of them in the countryside.
The number would rise by one million a year unless the government launched a 400 million a year dollar job creation program.
“But”, he said, “It is still not clear how the poor country will arrange this urge fund”.
Officials told Reuters introducing of modern technology was throwing people out of work on the country’s farms.
A recent World Bank report said nearly two million Bangladeshi women had lost their jobs as modern equipment replaced traditional foot operated rice husking tools.
Another 140,000 may lose their jobs every year as more rice mills mechanize, the report said.
Article extracted from this publication >> February 6, 1987
