Women in an outlying village in Jamalpur have identified dowry as one of the main reasons for poverty during a visit of the World Bank Country Director Christine Wallich.

Shova Akhter, a housewife, told Wallich that many families in the village became poor, as they paid dowry during marriages of girls.

"Guardians have to spend up to Tk 30,000 each on dowry, if they want to marry their daughters off," said Shova.

Wallich visited Kendua Dewani Bazar, 10 kilometres off Jamalpur town, Saturday morning to oversee a WB-funded project on her first trip out of Dhaka after her appointment as WB country director on July 1.

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The number of landless families is increasing due to dowry and almost 85 per cent of families have lost their land, according to the finds by the implementing agency of the project.

Wallich said the villagers have been able to identify their problems. "This really impressed me," she said with hopes that the village would be free from dowry.

The WB has been carrying out a $18.2 million social investment programme project to help the poor and vulnerable groups, with the Social Development Foundation (SDF), established by the government in 2001, as its implementing agency.

The project works with the help of some non-governmental organisations (NGOs) in 1,400 villages of Jamalpur and Gaibandha districts that have the highest level of poverty.

Under the project, villagers sit together and identify and discuss their problems, which are resolved through the project.

Kendua Dewani Bazar is the first village where the project is being run, and the Development Organisation of Rural Poor (DORP), a non-governmental organisation, has been appointed by the SDF to identify the problems of villagers.

The DORP identified some problems, including lack of employment opportunities, sanitation and infrastructure and put them forward to Wallich for scrutiny.

According to SDF Manager Shajahan Montu, problems are divided into two categories -infrastructural and social. He pointed to the lack of culverts facing the village and said 15 per cent of the funds for construction would be raised from the villagers and the rest from the project money.

Separate NGOs will be appointed to work out the social problems like unemployment, illiteracy, lack of health service and dowry.

The women will be trained in job creation and be provided with funds for small entrepreneurship, he said.

SDF Managing Director and former advisor of the caretaker government M Hafizuddin Khan and SDF Member Binayek Sen accompanied Wallich.

A workshop was organised at the Jamalpur Shilpakala Academy on the project the same day. Prime Minister's Principal Secretary Kamal Uddin Siddiqui inaugurated the workshop as chief guest.