Accolades for best use of remittance
A migrant worker and two remittance recei-ving families were awarded yesterday for investing remittances in productive sector.
Refugee and Migratory Movements Research Unit (RMMRU) gave away the awards in two categories -- Shonar Manush Award for the best remitter and Shera Remittance Baboharkari Paribar Award for the best remittance using family.
Finance Minister AMA Muhith handed trophies and cash money to the three recipients at Bangabandhu International Conference Centre.
A Saudi Arabia returnee Mohammad Ismail Hossain received the Shonar Manush Award for establishing a handloom factory with 36 handlooms in a 100-decimal plot in Tangail.
The factory employs around 200 handloom workers and produces 150-200 saris a day.
Abdul Mannan and Belal Uddin from Chittagong received Shera Remittance Baboharkari Paribar Award for setting up successful business enterprises with the remittances sent by their relatives.
Mannan bought a salt factory at Haidgaon in Chittagong at Tk 40 lakh from the remittances sent by his brothers now working in Abu Dhabi.
Around 80 people work in the factory, which produces around 7,000 maunds of salt a month.
Belal Uddin set up a poultry farm with the remittances sent by his brother in the UAE. He produces both layer and broiler chickens and employs 30 full-time workers.
The finance minister at the programme said labour migration and remittance are integral parts of the economy. Remittances contribute around 10 percent to the gross domestic product of the country, he added.
He said the migrated workers now send money easily and quickly through formal channels with the help of online technology. So, illegal 'hundi' business has come down in the last four years.
The migratory advocacy institution, RMMRU, started giving away the awards in 2009.
Shahdeen Malik, treasurer of RMMRU, said: “The main object of the awards is to encourage the migrants to invest in productive ventures.”
He said, more than 71 lakh Bangladeshis have migrated to the Middle East, South East Asian and other countries as contract migrant workers since 1970s.
In 2010, the migrant workers remitted $11.4 billion, which is 3.22 times higher than the net earnings of the readymade garments, 12.5 times more than the foreign direct investment and 6.4 times more than the foreign aid received by the country, said Tasneem Siddiqui, chairperson of the RMMRU at Dhaka University.
The RMMRU also awarded 14 bankers, four government officials and union parishad members to encourage them to provide better services to the migrants.
Barrister Anisul Islam Mahmud, chairman of the parliamentary standing committee on the overseas employment ministry, Mohammad Abdul Mannan, managing director of Islami Bank Bangladesh, and Shaheen Anam, executive director of Manusher Jonno Foundation, were also present at the ceremony.
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