Call to remove widening rich-poor income gap

FE Team | Published: October 18, 2007 00:00:00 | Updated: February 01, 2018 00:00:00

The UN-day on `remove poverty' was observed Wednesday holding a rally in the city's Muktangon with the call to put greater efforts at the national level on removing the widening income inequality between the poor and the rich in the society, reports BSS.
The day earmarked for October 17 is being observed every year since its launching in the year 2000 all over the world.
This year it has been observed in 170 countries and going beyond the call for distributive justice in the domestic sector, the call also urged the rich nations to fulfil their pledge to the poorer nations to achieve the millennium development goals.
The day known as "Global call on action against poverty" is being observed with participants lining up on the city streets for an hour chanting poverty related slogans. It aims to attract attention of the governments and policy makers to this growing challenge.
Equity and Justice Working Group (EJWG), a social platform working with policy issues and poverty reduction programmes, held the Muktangon rally with the slogan `higher growth is not enough, there should be more attention now to distributive justice.'
Conveyer of the group Rezaul Karim Chowdhury, secretary general Shamsuddoha, Shahadat Hossain Mintoo and Zaid Iqbal, among others, spoke on the occasion.
They said higher economic growth without its benefits reaching the poor would lead to troubles and discontent in the society. To achieve sustainable growth, there should be growing emphasis now on income and wealth redistribution to various segments of the society. They also urged the developed countries to fulfil their pledge of contributing 0.7 per cent of their GDP to the world's poorest nations to help them achieve the millennium development goals. They said these governments are now contributing only 0.3 per cent of their GDP, short of the commitment breaking the pledge and it is not acceptable.