Participants yesterday at a working session on poverty eradication and employment generation said strong political commitment is required for eradicating poverty and generating employment.

The observation was made during the working session of the three-day National Policy Dialogue Forum 2003 jointly organised by the Centre for Policy Dialogue (CPD), The Daily Star and The Prothom Alo held at the Academy for Planning and Development Auditorium.

Eminent economist Professor Rehman Sobhan chaired the session, which was attended by Rahmat Ali MP as special guest.

PKSF (Palli Karma Sahayak Foundation) Managing Director Salehuddin Ahmed said the Vietnamese government found bureaucratic attitude and corruption of the government officials as barriers to implementing development

projects.

"But the government there was able to overcome the problems by implementing the pledges it made before people," Ahmed said.

Imran Matin, member secretary of the task force on Poverty Eradication and Employment Generation and also senior economist of Research and Evaluation Division of BRAC Centre, presented the keynote paper.

Bangladesh Rural Advancement Committee (BRAC) Chairman Fazle Hasan Abed attended the session as chief guest.

PKSF managing director suggested preparing the interim poverty reduction strategy paper (I-PRSP) in line with the macro-economic policy agenda of the World Bank and the IMF.

He also stressed on devising ways to make poor people owners of enterprises.

BIDS Senior Research Fellow Binayak Sen, who was engaged

with the preparation of PRSP, said development process often takes tumble due to lack of political will.

Rahmat Ali MP said the development works are not progressing, as there is not enough presence of patriotic members in the parliament.

Mizan Khan, faculty member of the North South University Environmental Studies Department, said in addition to all the measures, micro-insurance of the poor people's assets, which might be affected by flood, cyclone or other natural calamities, should also be included in the poverty eradication process.

Taking part in the discussion, a teacher of Bangladesh Agriculture University blasted the government for not taking any member of the Planning Commission, which is planner of the poverty eradication of the country, to the recently concluded Bangladesh Development Forum (BDF) meeting.

Credit and Development Forum

Executive Director said NGOs are helping extreme poor groups. "But NGOs should also take initiatives so that people do not reach to the extreme poverty level," he said.

He also urged the government to set up a National Resource Development Institute, which will find out the reason of poverty.

An Awami League leader said actually this type of discussion should be held at the village level. "It will be more helpful for the organisers to find the better measure of poverty reduction," he said.

The task force suggested increasing access of poor people to assets. It also stressed on the enhancing the market power of the poor.

The report also suggested improving the quality of education as it is a strong tool for poverty eradication.