Deal to improve lives of people in haor areas

The government signed a financing deal with the International Fund for Agricultural Development (IFAD) on Thursday for a project to improve the living standards of haor people.

It is an additional grant financing for scaling up and innovating adaptation activities in the haor infrastructure livelihood improvement project, the finance ministry said in a statement.

 The Local Government Engineering Department is assigned to implement the project, which was launched in 2012 and will continue up to June 2019.

The project is financed from IFAD's adaptation for smallholder agriculture programme with $15 million. Now the combined total cost of HILIP and CALIF amounts to $133 million.

The project will cover the five Haor basins: Netrokona, Habiganj, Brahmanbaria, Kishoreganj and Sunamganj districts.

The livelihood protection component of the project is expected to benefit 94,000 persons directly in 26 upazilas.

The objectives of the project are to improve living standards and reduce vulnerability of the rural poor.

The main outcomes expected from the project include enhanced access to markets, livelihood opportunities and social services, to increase rural economic activities, reduction in the risk of crop production and increasing protection against extreme weather events.

The project is also aimed at ensuring enhanced access to fishery resources and conservation of bio-diversity, increasing production, diversification and marketing of crops and livestock produce and ensuring efficient cost effective and equitable use of project resources.

“Overall the project will create employment more than 5.6 million persons. This translates into full time employment for about 2,215 labourers annually for 7 years,” the ministry said in the statement.

Mahmuda Begum, additional secretary of the Economic Relations Division, signed the deal at the ERD on behalf of the government.