Population control
I read with interest recent letters in the DS regarding population boom, traffic jam situation, 'making Dhaka liveable' etc. The root of all the problems is our huge population. We do not know the actual number of population of Bangladesh. It is estimated to be anything between 140 to 150 million. They live in an area of 142 thousand square Km. All the fruits of policy planning, and hard work are being 'eaten up' by the huge population burden.
In 1962 population of East Pakistan was 50 million. Population control activities started in erstwhile East Pakistan during Ayub Khan's regime in the sixties. Bangladesh started with a population burden of 75 millions. Founder of our nation Bangabandhu Sheikh Mujibur Rahman realized the grave consequences of the population boom. Population control was one of the topmost priorities in his agenda. The next president Ziaur Rahman carried on the population control or planning activities. During his time two separate divisions were created- health and population control and two secretaries were appointed. So, disintegration was started and completed. The health secretariat was manned and administered by mainly medical professionals. Population planning manpower was mostly non-medical non-technical, less qualified. As health issues and population planning issues are interrelated, disintegration created lots of administrative and technical problems. Lots of problems cropped up in the field level. Even then population planning programme in Bangladesh is quite successful. Total fertility rate (TFR) and net population growth came down. Awareness was created. NGOs and the government played significant roles in bringing down the population. However, it is yet to achieve the desired goal of birth rate of below 2.
FWA, FWV and similar field level officials play very vital roles in rendering population control services. They visit houses, distribute or sell OCP, condoms and motivate people to adopt ligation and vasectomy. A few years ago the home visit programme was stopped at the recommendation of some international agencies. They postulated that people have become well aware of population boom and will visit the centres by themselves to seek services foregoing cooking, cleaning, rearing up children etc. activities! HPs (health assistant) work in EPI, maternal health, neonatal health, ARI and other programmes. They are overworked and have to cover larger population than FWAs. In the meanwhile, tension was also broiling up among the health and PP personnel at all levels. Instead of becoming complimentary to each other they turned into rivals! There is also lot of overlapping in their programmes.
In 1996-2001, the government rightly felt the need for integration of health and population planning divisions for better co-ordination, cost cuts, optimum use of manpower, defusing tension, delivery of better services etc. and started the process. The process of integration was stalled during the next regime at the instigation of vested interest groups.
All these factors played significant roles in reduced population planning/control activities in Bangladesh in the recent years. Now, we need a 'surge' in activities which is only possible if all health related activities and population planning activities are planned, monitored, supervised and managed by a single authority. This means integration of both the divisions.
India will very soon surpass China as the most populated country in the world. China has been quite successful in controlling population with an iron hand. Those measures may not be feasible in Bangladesh but a policy of reward and punishment may be initiated.
We urge upon the present government and the next elected government to attach utmost priority to population control, else we are doomed to plunging into more poverty and poverty related terrorism, criminal and other negative activities
Our goal of becoming a middle income country is bound to remain a distant dream if the government fails to act ASAP.
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