Sajeeb Wazed Joy takes a dig at civil society

Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina’s ICT Affairs Adviser Sajeeb Wazed Joy has said some members of civil society create a “false sense of alarm” about the employment problem despite Bangladesh’s jobless rate being “one of the lowest” in the world.

He questioned the motive of those members for not projecting the country’s “development transformation” before the world but “their desperate bid to malign the country’s image”.

The prime minister's only son was interacting with a select group of 300 young enterpreuners from different sectors ranging from ICT to dairy industry and e-enterprise at an event titled “Policy Café” in Dhaka on Tuesday.

The Awami League’s research wing Center for Research and Information (CRI) organised the event, opening up a unique scope for the leading and growing entrepreneurs to place their observations before him about what should be the policies to speed up the national growth.

He urged the youths to be self-employed, counting on an array of skill development schemes put in place by the government.

“It’s the top priority of the government to addresses your challenges,” he said.

On the unemployment issue, Joy said unlike many other developing countries and developed nations, the unemployment rate in Bangladesh is very low—at a mere 4.2 percent.

Even though, he said, this rate excluded the non-traditional employment scopes such as Pathao, and Uber ride-hailing services.

He claimed around 400,000 employments, excluding those in mobile banking sector, have been created.

The unemployment rate is 9.2 percent in France and 5.5 percent in Australia, he pointed out.

“Yet this civil society group has been terming our success stories as jobless growth. In 2017, over 1.4 million employments have been created in the country and still it is growing.”

“Why do that quarter is always seen remaining hell bent on painting a negative view on the country,” he asked, “particularly when we see progresses in almost all sectors”.