Bangladesh to suffer from UK aid cut

The UK government has cut funding to BRAC as they suddenly closed 10-year £450m partnership.

People concerned considered it a “gut punch” to the development sector of Bangladesh, British daily The Guardian reported recently.

BRAC executive director Asif Saleh said the funding cut will result in hundreds of thousands of girls without education, millions of women and girls with no access to family planning plus hundreds of thousands of people will remain in extreme poverty.

At the G7 summit on 11 June, the UK government announced it would spend an additional £430m (43 crore) on girls education in 90 countries over the next five years. The announcement prompted accusations of hypocrisy.

Chair of global children’s charity Theirworld Sarah Brown compared the funding with a “drop in the ocean”. Firstly, global education has faced huge damage because of coronavirus and secondly, the international aid budget has been cut enormously.

Asif Saleh further told The Guardian, “The dramatic fall is completely unexpected. It’s like a gut punch. We did not anticipate it would be a complete withdrawal from the partnership. From a commitment of £200m (20 crore) over five years to absolutely nothing – it’s a mistake.”

Since the beginning of coronavirus pandemic, about 16 million (1.6 crore) people fall into extreme poverty in Bangladesh. According to World Bank, an additional 150 million (15 crore) people will be in extreme poverty by 2021 globally.

With UK support, BRAC ran the largest non-formal school programme in Bangladesh. Twelve million (1.2 crore) children have graduated from these schools.

Besides, BRAC runs a programme to bring out of extreme poverty with the help of UK aid. The “graduation model” has lifted 2 million (20 lakh) people out of extreme poverty in Ethiopia, Ghana, India, Pakistan, Honduras and Peru.