The New Nation - Internet Edition

M Syfullah

The unemployment problem poses a serious threat to the country at the moment, according to economists.

The country is now burdened with about four crore unemployed people, said economist Prof. Abul Barakat at a recent seminar in the capital. But the government put the number of unemployed people at 22 lakh.

Barakat said nearly one crore people lost their job during the last one and a half years due to 'wrong policy' of the government. The eviction drive alone threw 30 lakh hawkers and small traders out of employment, he claimed.

According to the draft Labour Force Survey (LFS) report 2005-06 of the Bangladesh Bureau of Statistics (BBS), the growth rate of employment has reduced by 50 percent while unemployment rose by 50 percent since 2003. Bangladesh's unemployed amounted to some 2.1 million people in 2006, the report added.

The Labour Force Survey 2005-06 of the BBS defined those people 'unemployed' who do not work for even a single hour a day.

Total paid employment declined from 16 million in 1999-2000 to 15 million in 2002-03 and 15.2 million in 2005-06.

The survey pointed out that annual employment growth was 2.2 percent during 2003-2006 compared to 4.4 percent in 2000-2003. But the unemployment rate increased from 16.6 percent in 2000 to 24.5 percent in 2006, it noted.

More than two million people, who constitute 4.3 percent of the labour force, were unemployed, according to the LFS 2002-03.

The survey also said that over 15 million people, or 34.2 percent of the labour force, were underemployed with limited working opportunities. Absolute unemployment increased in all these years because of the government's inability to generate new jobs, it mentioned.

Of the total employed population of 47.4 million, 19.9 million were self-employed, 10.3 million unpaid family workers and 8.6 million people day labourers, the LFS 2005-06 said.

The unemployment crisis may to be aggravated further in future if the government fails to take proper steps for creating employment opportunities as more than three million new faces are being added to the country's labour force, according to economists.

President of the Bangladesh Economic Association (BEA) Prof Dr Quazi Kholiquzzaman told a recent seminar natural calamities like and flood and cyclone accentuated the sufferings of the common people and left many of them jobless.

He also attributed the high rate of unemployment to the fall in the volume of investment in recent times.