The New Nation - Internet Edition

Staff Reporter

Masafumi Kuroki, Vice Presiden, Japan International Cooperation Agency (JICA), while visiting the Local Government Engineering Department (LGED) and its Rural Development Engineering Centre (RDEC) Project (Phase-2) at LGED Headquarters in Dhaka on Monday said, rural development is a top priority area in Bangladesh and JICA has been giving adequate importance to this sector accordingly. He lauded the strong leadership and the people of high capacity working in LGED.

Md. Shahidul Hassan, Chief Engineer, LGED had earlier welcomed the Vice President of JICA to LGED premises and invited him to a brief presentation session on the rural development strategies and policies of the Government of Bangladesh and LGED's core involvement in those processes.

JICA Vice-President, in his remarks, said, co-operations in hardware and software development is very important. He said, money alone cannot solve everything. Technological development and capacity building are equally essential, he added.

Itsu Adachi, Senior Assistant to Director General, Department of General Affairs, JICA, Ms. Nobuko Kayashima, Resident Representative, JICA Bangladesh and Mr. Yasuo Fujita, Chief Representative of JBIC, Dhaka accompanied the JICA Vice President during his visit.

Md. Shahidul Hassan, Chief Engineer, LGED in his deliberations, had recalled with gratitude the history of co-operation between Bangladesh and Japan. He said the bondage between the peoples of Japan and Bangladesh are unique in the sense that they happen to be rice-eating Asians.

Proximity between the government and the peoples of the two-countries came closer first in 1971 during the War of Liberation in Bangladesh and thereafter in 1977 when a passenger carrying aircraft of JAL was hijacked and landed in Dhaka airport for a peaceful negotiation to free the hostages.

Earlier, Md. Wahidur Rahman, Additional Chief Engineer, LGED and Project Director, RDEC Project, LGED delivered a brief presentation on LGED Activities, specially JICA assisted projects in LGED.