Anisul Huq (middle), Law, Justice and Parliamentary Affairs Minister handing over DBBL scholarship award to a recipient on Saturday. Sayem Ahmed (extreme right), chairman of the board of directors of DBBL, and Abul Kashem Md Shirin, managing director and CEO of the bank, seen Dutch-Bangla Bank Ltd (DBBL) on Saturday awarded scholarships to 3,018 underprivileged and meritorious students who passed the Higher Secondary Certificate (HSC) or equivalent examinations in 2019.
The DBBL, one of the leading private commercial banks in the country, under its scholarship programme, awarded a total of 62,752 students so far since initiation of the scheme in 1997.
The bank authority handed over the first instalment of scholarship money the new recipients at a ceremony organised at the Shaheed Suhrawardy Indoor stadium in the city's Mirpur.
Law, Justice and Parliamentary Affairs Minister Anisul Huq addressed the programme as the chief guest while chairman of the board of directors of DBBL Sayem Ahmed, and the bank's managing director and CEO Abul Kashem Md Shirin also spoke on the occasion.
Terming the scholarship programme a unique example of helping the meritorious and needy students, the minister expected that all corporate bodies of the country should come forward with such initiative for benefit of the society.
He said among the scholarship recipients, 90 per cent are from rural Bangladesh.
Extreme poverty couldn't prevent them from taking higher education.
He also mentioned that the government has taken youth centric development approach with the motto 'leaving no one behind' as one-third of the country's population are youth.
Sayem Ahmed said DBBL started the scholarship scheme noticing that despite showing academic excellence, many students are deprived of fair chance of education for economic, demographic and societal causes.
These students had been failing to pursue their dreams not because of lacked merit but scarcity of resources to use their merit, he said.
He also said the scholarship will transform and empower students to study attentively and make valuable contribution to the country.
Mr Shirin said the bank has increased the monthly scholarship amount by Tk 500 to be effective from January 2020 for both HSC and graduation level.
From now, the scholarship awardees will get monthly Tk 3,000 from existing Tk 2,500. Besides, they will also get an annual grant of Tk 6,000 for buying reading materials and clothing.
To provide scholarships in new rate, the bank will require additional Tk 100 million per annum, he noted.
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