July 22,2010

Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina today said her government has a plan to create an education fund to provide free education to the poor and deprived students. "We are planning to create an education fund specially for the poor students to raise the literacy rate to cent percent for the overall development of the country," she said. The Prime Minister expressed her desire when the newly appointed Sri Lankan High Commissioner to Bangladesh Sarath Kumara Weragoda paid a courtesy call on her at her office here this morning. During the meeting, they discussed wide range of issues of mutual interests including expansion of bilateral trade and business and increasing import of Bangladeshi pharmaceuticals, ceramics, plastic wares and toiletries by Sri Lanka. The Prime Minister stressed the need for exploring cooperation in tourism, climate change issues, disaster management, health, agriculture science and ICT, literature and arts. Describing education as the key to attain progress and prosperity, Sheikh Hasina said keeping this in mind her government has attached due importance to further expansion of education across the country. In this context, she referred that her present government has made the highest allocation to the country's education sector in the current national budget, which will eventually play a key role in alleviating poverty. The Prime Minister mentioned Sri Lankan President's Education Fund and said the country can extend support to Bangladesh to form its education fund through sharing of experiences. On terrorism and militancy, Sheikh Hasina said Bangladesh will play its due role to free the South Asian region from the curses maintaining its firm stance against these social menaces. Sheikh Hasina said her previous government successfully restored peace and stability in Chittagong Hill Tracts (CHT) by politically settling all issues of the CHT region.