Biz BD News

Information Minister Hasanul Haq Inu proposed year 2020 to be called ‘South Asian Year Against Poverty’ and urged media for all out campaign to bring people out of poverty.
The minister proposed this in his speech as chief guest at the inaugural session of two-day Sub-regional SDG Workshop for Broadcasters on Ending Poverty, began at BTV Conference Hall in Dhaka today.
Principal Coordinator-SDG Affairs of Prime Minister’s Office Abul Kalam Azad and Information Secretary Martuza Ahmed spoke as special guests while AIBD Director Chang Jin and Director General of BTV S M Haroon-Or-Rashid gave the welcome and concluding speech respectively in the session.
Hasanul Haq Inu said, ‘The European Union had observed 2010 as ‘European Year Against Poverty’. I urge that, South Asia should better be late than never, to observe 2020 as South Asian Year Against Poverty.’
‘Let all South-Asian nations work together, involving respective media, and come up with specific road maps by 2020 and join together to uproot poverty ahead of the SDG timeline of 2030’, he added.
The minister said, ‘The role of broadcasters have grown over time and they play a key role in making people’s mindset. They must focus on achieving prosperity void of poverty and discrimination and building a democracy void of terrorism.’
In a 10-point charter, the Information Minister urged broadcasters to sensitize society more on poverty, promote social economy, advocate politics of zero-poverty, emphasize gender balance in education and work, address climate change and disaster risk factors causing poverty, open public forum utilizing the social media, treat poverty reduction stories with glory, train journalists on addressing poverty, engage media specialists for stronger role on ending poverty and to shed light on works of state and non-state actors for poverty eradication.
28 participants from broadcasters and affiliates of Afghanistan, Bhutan, India, Maldives, Nepal, Srilanka and host country are attending the workshop jointly organised by the Asia-Pacific Institute for Broadcasting Development (AIBD) and Bangladesh Television.