Civil society under govt pressure: Akbar Ali Khan

Former adviser to caretaker government Akbar Ali Khan on Monday said that the government had kept the civil society of Bangladesh under pressure for criticising it.
‘Functions of the civil society are to criticise the government and to keep it under pressure,’ he said at a roundtable, on ‘localising sustainable goals’ at BRAC Centre in the capital.
He said that as the civil society people were not ‘flatterers’, they would continue to criticise the government.
As for the role of local governments in achieving sustainable development goals, Akbar Ali doubted if local government institutions could play any role to achieve the SDGs as there was no functional local government in the country.
He said that the local governments had no authority to do something independently as they had to depend on local lawmakers.
The former bureaucrat said that Bangladesh achieved a lot in achieving millennium development goals but could make hardly any progress in terms of malnutrition and child marriage.
Susashoner Jonno Nagarik general secretary Badiul Alam Majumdar, also country director of The Hunger Project, echoed with Akbar Ali and said that the civil society could not act as ‘public relations officers’ of the government.
Former Bangladesh Bank governor Salehuddin Ahmed said that local government institutions would not be made functional without stopping lawmakers’ interventions.
He suggested that a local government finance commission should be formed to ensure equal distribution of resources and to reduce regional disparity.
United Nations Development Programme resident representative Robert D Watkins underscored the need for coordination between national and local levels as well as among different government agencies to achieve the SDGs.
BRAC Community Empowerment Programme and The Hunger Project jointly organised the roundtable that was addressed, among others, by Community Empowerment Programme director Anna Minj and representatives of different local governments and non-governmental organisations.

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