The letter "Population boom" written by Engineer Shafi Ahmed was published on 22 September'08. It correctly emphasised the successful family planning programme to limit the size of the population. Please refer to Gen Moeen U Ahmed's recent article on Food Security in the country where he touched on the issue of population boom and consequent problems. I think this issue is very important and the nation should consider it seriously.

Definitely, this is the "number one" problem of our country. Due to continuous political crisis, our nation could not think about this issue seriously, I mean both the government and the opposition failed to do something positive to limit the population boom, which creates a lot of problems in Bangladesh, like unbearable

traffic jam, environment pollution, food adulteration, public health problem, food shortage, poverty - what not! And the problems are getting worse day by day.

I know international development communities/donors put a lot of money for containing the population boom and improving the family health situation, especially among the poor segments of people since independence of Bangladesh, particularly after the late seventies. However, during the last eight years, the focus has been a bit diluted. We have many success stories in the health and population sector - but still the absolute number of population is growing at a faster rate compared to the resources, time and energy and efforts given. This is because there is no clear and consistent national strategy on health and

population control. It's focus changes due to change of the party in power. Sometimes a reverse policy is adopted by the new govt (just to oppose the previous government's policy). As a result, our success has been limited.

Although we have a lot of Bangladeshi experts in the health and population sector, but we could not utilise their knowledge and wisdom due to political rivalry. Now the opportunity has come to the CTG to take the initiative and do something better for the nation, which 1 believe will be accepted by all because this is a non-controversial (nonpolitical too) national issue. So everybody will sincerely contribute to the formulation of an effective and result-oriented national policy.

Nikhil Datta

Dhanmondi, Dhaka