Dhaka, June 3 (IANS) Bangladesh’s 156 million population is ‘not a burden’ and can be turned into skilled manpower, says Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina.
She informed the parliament that her government was ‘not afraid’ of the high population growth of the country and underscored the need for ‘turning the huge population into skilled manpower’, The Daily Star newspaper said Thursday.
‘I don’t think that the huge population of the country is a burden for us, I prefer to term it as a strength for us. We just need to train the population,’ she said while responding to a supplementary question.
Bangladesh is one of the world’s most densely populated countries.
It has run a fairly successfully programme at controlling population growth that has been appreciated by international agencies.
Bangladesh is going to introduce a voluntary ‘one couple, one child’ population planning policy by 2015 to curb its growing population, a government official said last year.
