Work in advance to avert famine: PM tells secretaries

Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina on Sunday asked the secretaries to take precautionary measures alongside making people aware so that the country can avert the looming famine amid the prolonged global crisis caused by the coronavirus pandemic and Russia-Ukraine war.

"This is not my word. It is said globally that a famine may immerge before the world. We have to take measures in advance from now on so that the looming famine never strikes our country," she said while delivering her introductory speech in the Secretaries' Committee Meeting at her Tejgaon office here.

The Prime Minister made a number of suggestions for implementation which include being economical in public expenditure, setting priority development projects, diversifying exports, attracting investments, preparing skilled manpower for the fourth industrial revolution, making people aware to bring every inch of fallow land under cultivation and showing austerity in using electricity and gas.

Sheikh Hasina said when the world economy is reeling from the pandemic, the Russia-Ukraine war, sanctions and counter sanctions have created economic recession across the globe, adding that one or two countries are getting benefit of the crisis while rest of the countries including the developed ones have been suffering immensely.

"Developed countries are even facing severe crises for which their economic growth and reserve have been declining. Inflation has increased manifolds across the globe. "Our country is not out of its purview and it also hits our economy," she said.