Higher allocation not enough
THE New Nation on Sunday reported Finance Minister AMA Muhith has said the education and health sectors budget would be much larger than before in the upcoming financial budget to ensure improvement in the standard of education and health to bring them closer to global level. The Minister’s outline for the budget is laudable indeed. But the question is that when the quality of primary and tertiary education is at low how the improvement will start from the top. Whatever to be the budget for these sectors, they will be small portion of the budget when its major portion will go for paying bureaucracy and such other unproductive sectors. In the last several budgets, we observed the government allocation in health and education increased year-to-year and when in terms of expenditure these were satisfactory, their tangible benefits were not as corruptions and misuse of funds have taken away the larger part of the budget.
We believe that the country must enjoy demographic dividend and it has only one way – that is to better educate the people and train them in various technical skills. Open-ended education is of no help as our economy is growing fast demanding trained manpower to supply workforce at mills, factories and utility services. Education increases the human capital inherent in the labour force, which enhances labour productivity leading towards a higher level of output. It increases innovative capacity of the economy and fosters new knowledge to promote socio-economic growth. It is the vehicle of social transformation but efforts must be initiated from the lower tiers of the education to bear fruits. We believe that the education system must be reformed with focus on creating more productive manpower instead of going into ideological debates.
Similarly, people need better health services to be higher productive but the health sector is also target of pervasive corruption and misuse of funds under false procurement drives and such other development projects. Bangladesh has been successful in cutting both maternal and child deaths but newborn deaths make up about 60 percent of all under-five mortality. But a large number of poor are still out of the medicare while government hospitals are not enough and also not well-equipped to cure endemic diseases. So, investments in quality of care and increasing coverage of care services for all, especially for women and the babies, are imperative as such investment can bring a triple return – preventing endemic diseases, newborn deaths and making a healthy generation.
What we believe is making higher allocations is not enough, how the money will be used to creative purposes and saved from the corruption and misuse of dishonest political operatives and departmental officials is quite important. In our view the Finance Minister’s target to develop human dividends is quite right. But higher allocations must have better planning also to attain desired results.
We believe that the country must enjoy demographic dividend and it has only one way – that is to better educate the people and train them in various technical skills. Open-ended education is of no help as our economy is growing fast demanding trained manpower to supply workforce at mills, factories and utility services. Education increases the human capital inherent in the labour force, which enhances labour productivity leading towards a higher level of output. It increases innovative capacity of the economy and fosters new knowledge to promote socio-economic growth. It is the vehicle of social transformation but efforts must be initiated from the lower tiers of the education to bear fruits. We believe that the education system must be reformed with focus on creating more productive manpower instead of going into ideological debates.
Similarly, people need better health services to be higher productive but the health sector is also target of pervasive corruption and misuse of funds under false procurement drives and such other development projects. Bangladesh has been successful in cutting both maternal and child deaths but newborn deaths make up about 60 percent of all under-five mortality. But a large number of poor are still out of the medicare while government hospitals are not enough and also not well-equipped to cure endemic diseases. So, investments in quality of care and increasing coverage of care services for all, especially for women and the babies, are imperative as such investment can bring a triple return – preventing endemic diseases, newborn deaths and making a healthy generation.
What we believe is making higher allocations is not enough, how the money will be used to creative purposes and saved from the corruption and misuse of dishonest political operatives and departmental officials is quite important. In our view the Finance Minister’s target to develop human dividends is quite right. But higher allocations must have better planning also to attain desired results.
