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DHAKA: Experts at a seminar in the city yesterday called for ensuring quality education and healthcare in villages and towns to stop migration to metropolitan cities.
They made the call at a seminar on ‘Urbanization and Migration in Bangladesh’ at Sher-e-Bangla Nagar NEC conference room.
General Economics Division of Planning Commission and UNFPA organized the seminar on the occasion of releasing a report on the subject.
The speakers said 20,000 people become migrants every week in Bangladesh, of which 42 percent come to Dhaka district.
Of the internal migrants, 56 percent comes to mega city Dhaka, including the capital, Narayanganj and Gazipur while 10 percent goes to Chittagong, they added.
On the other hand, population has declined in one decade from 2001 to 2011 in two other metropolitan cities – Khulna and Rajshahi.
Presided over by Planning Commission’s General Economics Division chief Nakib Bin Mahbub, the seminar was attended as chief guest by General Economics Division Member Prof. Dr. Shamsul Alam.
Australian National University Professor Gavin Jons and Dhaka University (DU) Geography and Environment Professor AQM Mahbub presented keynote papers in the seminar.
DU Geography and Environment Professor Dr. Nurul Islam Nazim and International Organization for Migration (IOM) Bangladesh Programme Manager Abdus Sattar took part in the discussion while UNFPA Representative Argentina Matavel Piccin gave welcome address.
Dr. Shamsul Alam said people are migrating to cities from villages though currently transport system, power, cable TV and other urban facilities have improved in rural areas.
Pragmatic plans should be taken to stop this, he added.