RAJSHAHI, May 30, 2018 (BSS)-Experts at a meeting here on Tuesday said the
government is preparing National Household Database (NHD) to determine
economic status of the people aiming to eliminate poverty from the city.
“We are using Proxy Mean Test-Formula (PMTF) to assess economic status of
every household in Bangladesh,” Ashraful Alam Siddiqui, said joint director
of Divisional Bureau of Statistics.
He was presenting a concept paper on formulation of NHD at a meeting of
Rajshahi City Corporation (RCC).
Bangladesh Bureau of Statistics (BBS) and its Information Management
Division are formulating NHD in the city corporation area.
BBS and RCC jointly organized the meeting with Mayor Musaddeque Hossain
Bulbul in the chair.
RCC Panel Mayor Anwarul Amin Azab, Chief Executive Officer Shah Mumin and
Chief Revenue Officer Shahana Akhter Jahan also addressed the meeting.
Ashraful Alam Siddiqui said, once completed, the database will have
information related to socio-economic condition of all households of the city
which will also help minimizing to a great extent the misuses and leakages of
resources at beneficiary level under various social safety net programmes.
In his remarks, Mayor Bulbul said, “As the country has no household
database, we cannot assess economic condition at family level, which is
hampering the poverty reduction efforts of the government.”
I believe that the NHD will remove overlapping practices of social safety-
net programmes,” Bulbul added.
He, however, expects the database will become powerful information storage
in the city which will contribute a lot towards adopting pro-poor and anti-
poverty projects in the years to come.