The government is preparing National Household Database(NHD) to identify economic status of the people aiming to eliminate poverty from the country, officials told a function yesterday.
“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 while addressing the inaugural function of Training of Trainers (ToT) for Zonal Operation at Bangladesh Bureau of Statistics (BBS) here.
The National Household Database Project under the BBS in cooperation with Thengamara Mohila Sabuj Sangha (TMSS) has organized the two-day training programme.
Additional Secretary of Statistics and Informatics Division Bikash Kishore Das, Consultant of TMSS Md Abul Quasem and senior officials of Statistics and Informatics Division, among others, addressed the function with BBS Director General Md Amir Hossain in the chair.
Former Director General of BBS Mohammed Abdul Wazed said, “NID will be prepared based on economic status of every household to ensure bringing the target group under the social safety-net programme. NID will be an online database, which will remove all sorts of irregularities of the social safety-net programme.”
Referring to the latest BBS data revealed in October, 2016, he said percentage of extreme poor in the country is 12.9 while overall rate of poor people is 18.5 percent.
“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 that the NID will remove overlapping practices of social safety-net programmes,” Wazed added.
Abul Quasem, also former deputy governor of Bangladesh bank, said after preparing of NID, real beneficiaries will be included in the social safety-net programme.
“NID will significantly help to achieve Sustainable Development Goal (SDG) through successful implementation of social safety-net programme,” he added.
