Rights bodies for increase in health, edn allocations

Thirty rights bodies have demanded of the government to increase budgetary allocations for essential public services including education and health.

In a memorandum placed at a press conference at the National Press Club in the city Tuesday they also called for stopping illicit capital outflow and corruption.

The memorandum addressing the lawmakers will be handed to the Jatiya Sangsad today (Wednesday).

Checking corruption, they said, can save about 2.5 per cent of the GDP (gross domestic product) while stopping illicit capital outflow can add more than Tk 35 billion (3,500 crore) to the state coffer.

The organisations working on rights of farmers and labourers demanded utilisation of this (saved) fund for the poor people, a news release said.

The press conference on "Memorandum to all MPs: Allocation to Public Services and Stop Illicit Capital and Corruption before Spreading the Tax Net" was addressed, among others, by Rezaul Karim Chowdhury of EquityBD, Md. Mujibul Haque Munir of the same organisation, M Fayej Hossain of Bangladesh Sramik Federation, Abdul Wahed of Jatiya Sramik Jote, and J. Bahraine Sultan Bahar of Jago Bangladesh Garments Sramik Federation.  

According to the memorandum, the proposed allocation for education in the budget for the fiscal year 2015-16 is just 13.7 per cent of the budget while the UNESCO suggested at least 20 per cent.

Despite the WHO suggested GDP's 5.0 per cent allocation for health, the allocation in the budget is only 0.73 per cent of GDP, the memorandum said.

Some other demands in the memorandum include minimising the administrative expenditure, strengthening monitoring on mobile banking, easing pressure on public universities so that they can become self-reliant and withdrawing additional VAT from private universities.

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