The New Nation - Internet Edition

Staff Reporter

Bangladesh has made a good progress in achieving the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) even though there are big disparities in education, child and maternal health among its 64 districts, the Multiple Indicators Cluster Survey (MICS), 2009 Bangladesh revealed at a workshop at a hotel in the city yesterday.

Bangladesh Bureau of Statistics (BBS) jointly with United Nations Children's Fund (UNICEF) conducted the survey in 64 districts of the country. As many as 7,683 interviews were conducted for data collection from 300,000 households form April-May last year.

The five key best performing districts are Jhenidah, Meherpur, Munshiganj, Panchgarh and Narayanganj while the least performing districts are Cox's Bazar, Rangamati, Sunamganj, Khagrachhari and Bandarban.

There exist wide gaps between the best and the worst performing districts related to education, child death, maternal health, HIV/AIDS, access to safe drinking water and improved sanitation, survey showed.

Bangladesh has reached gender parity in primary education but not yet in secondary education. Progress has also been recorded in the retention rate of pupils at primary school as almost 80 per cent of children, who starts grade one reach the last grade of primary school compared to only 63.6 per cent in 2006, the survey revealed.

Access to improved source of water is almost universal with 77.8 per cent. But the report also indicates that 12.6 per cent of the households drinking water exceeds Bangladesh standards for arsenic content. Access to safe drinking water is reduced to 85.2 per cent of the population while considering arsenic contamination.

The survey says that Sherpur, the worst performing district in the case of child mortality as 102 deaths were reported in 1000 live births while the best performing one, Pabna, recorded only 43 per 1000 while the national average is 67 per 1000 live births.

On the proportion of skilled birth attendants, the survey showed that there is a huge disparity with 61 percent for the best performing district Meherpur while the worst performing Bandarban has only 8 per cent.

About the net attendance rate in primary education, the difference is

30 percentage points between the best performing Meherpur (91

percent) and the worst performing Bandarban (60.6 per cent).

Speaking as the chief guest at the workshop Planning Minister Air Vice Marshall (Retd) AK Khandker (BU) said that the government has given highest priority for the welfare of the children and women.

He said the findings of the MICS 2009 would be useful to the stakeholders to evaluate the outcome of these interventions as the sample size of MICS has been increased to a large extent to provide estimates at the upazila level.

"We have a lot of information at the national level. But these information could not help much in prescribing appropriate programmes and policies prioritising the most disadvantaged areas," he said.

He said the government was considering to reorganising the BBS to strengthen its capacity for timely, reliable and disaggregated information for the planner, policy makers, development partners and other users.

Carel de Rooy, Unicef Representative said the MICS report provided a

solid baseline for the government to measure MDGs at all levels.

Kazi Akhter Uddin Ahmed, joint secretary of Bangladesh Bureau of Statistics (BBS) made welcome speech and Md Shahjahan Ali Mollah, director general (DG) of BBS offered vote of thanks.

Md Habib Ullah Majumber, secretary, Planning Division was present as special guest.