The New Nation - Internet Edition

Staff Reporter

Centre on Integrated Rural Development for Asia and the Pacific (CIRDAP) started a two-day long researchers' meeting on 'Strategic and Institutional Perspectives of CIRDAP: Revisiting its Role in the Changing Context' yesterday at the headquarters of the centre in Dhaka.

Researchers from all the 14 member countries will review the past policies and programmes on rural development and poverty alleviation and identify policy level issues and concerns.

LGRD Adviser Mohammad Anwarul Iqbal inaugurated the meeting as chief guest and launched a publication of CIRDAP on 'Agrarian Reform and Rural Development: Sharing Experience from the Philippines'. The Adviser said despite remarkable achievements in rural development and poverty alleviation the Asia Pacific region contained almost three quarter of the world's poor and the gap between poverty and prosperity was widening.

He hoped that the consultants and researchers would finalise a design by interacting basic approaches, parameters and formats of the country level study and the design would be more helpful for poverty alleviation and rural development.

Muhammad Nazrul Islam, Secretary, Rural Development and Co-operatives Division chaired the inaugural ceremony while Dr Durga P Paudyal, Director General of CIRDAP, Dr S Narayan, Consultant of CIRDAP and Dr Nasreen Khundkar, Director, Research of CIRDAP spoke at the meeting.

Md Nazrul Islam said, Japan has consented to facilitate CIRDAP both by funding and strategic support.