Staff Reporter :
With a view to eliminating poverty of households through identifying their economic status, the government has taken a new project namely — National Household Database (NHD) Project — targeting to bring 350 million housemaids.
“We are using Proxy Mean Test-Formula (PMTF) to assess economic status of every household in Bangladesh,” Deputy Project Director of NHD Programme Dr Neyamat Ullah Bhuiyan said this while addressing an inaugural function of the ‘Training of Trainers’ for data collection at Bangladesh Bureau of Statistics (BBS) in the city on Tuesday.
The National Household Database Project under the BBS organized the three-day training programme in cooperation with Thengamara Mohila Sabuj Sangha (TMSS). Additional Secretary of Statistics and Informatics Division MA Mannan Howlader, Deputy Director General of BBS Md Baitul Amin Bhuiyan and Treasurer of TMSS Aysha Begum, among others, addressed the function with BBS Director General Md Amir Hossain in the chair.
Director of Information and Communication Technology (ICT) of TMSS and Member Board of TMSS ICT Limited Nigar Sultana, and representatives of different government and non-government organisations were present, among others.
Dr Neyamat said, “NHD, an online database, will be prepared based on economic status of every household to ensure bringing the target group under the social safety-net programme which will help remove all sorts of irregularities.”
The NHD project officially launched in 2013 and it will be completed by December, 2018, he said, adding, “Under the project, data will be collected from 350 million households across the country in three phases.”
Dr Neyamat said under the first phase, data collection survey will be conducted from 17 districts of the three divisions — Rangpur, Barisal and Mymensingh — from April 4 to 23. The data will be collected from targeted households of Rajshahi and Sylhet divisions in the second phase while Dhaka, Chittagong divisions and Netrokona district will be brought under the third phase of the survey.
Amir Hossain said, “As the country has no household database, we cannot assess economic condition at family level, which is hampering the poverty reduction efforts of the government. I believe the NHD will remove overlapping practices of social safety-net programmes.”
Referring to the latest BBS data revealed in October, 2016, its officials said percentage of extreme poor in the country is 12.9 while overall rate of poor people is 18.5.
Nigar Sultana said after preparing of NHD, real beneficiaries will be included in the social safety-net programme.
“NHD will significantly help to achieve Sustainable Development Goal (SDG) through successful implementation of social safety-net programme,” she added.
