Former Grameen Bank Managing Director Muhammad Yunus has blasted the
government for amending laws governing the micro-finance institution.
The Nobel laureate said in a press release that the amendment to the
law would fundamentally alter the bank’s character.
“With these amendments, the government has opened the door for its
ultimate destruction,” he observed in a strongly-worded statement
released on Wednesday.
Parliament on Tuesday passed the Grameen Bank Bill-2013 despite the
main opposition party BNP’s strident objections.
Under the new law, the Grameen Bank Managing Director, chosen from a
panel of up to five candidates with Bangladesh Bank approval, will
have three-year term.
The bank’s Board of Directors will now have 12 members— three
government nominees and nine chosen by the stakeholders.
The MD will head the Board, but without voting rights.
Yanus claims the changes will enable the government to gain 100
percent control of the institution, hitherto owned and managed by poor
women.
The eminent economist pointed to the bank’s legal structure, saying it
did not allow government meddling in any form except for regulatory
oversight.
“I feel extremely sorry that the nation has to go through the
unnecessary traumatic experience of seeing a great global iconic
institution, created by this nation, be brutally harmed by a group of
irresponsible and thoughtless people,” he went on to add.
He said that the immediate task before the country was to “repair the
enormous damage done to the Grameen Bank…before it is too late.”
He hoped, the statement said, that the nation, all women, especially
the women of Grameen Bank, the members of their family, and the bank
staff would rise to prevent the damage.
The BNP has cried foul over the government’s move to bring the Grameen
Bank under the supervision of the Bangladesh Bank.
“The government wants to destroy this institution by bringing the
Grameen Bank under the central bank’s control and changing its
structure,” alleged BNP’s acting Secretary General Mirza Fakhrul Islam
Alamgir on Wednesday.
He says the bill was meant for that purpose.
Fakhrul urged the government to let bank run on its own course and
give up attempts to control it.
Nobel laureate Muhammad Yunus had been the Managing Director since
Grameen’s inception in 1983.
The central bank had removed him from his post in March 2011.
Yunus challenged the decision in court but lost the appeal and
resigned from his post.
Yunus shared the Nobel Peace Prize in 2006 with Grameen Bank “for
their efforts in poverty alleviation” through microcredit.
He had been a staunch critic of the government ever since.
The incumbent government took the initiative to amend and scrap
ordinances declared during military rule, including the Grameen Bank
Ordinance of 1983.
Yunus criticised the government and said it was a plot to ‘curb the
Bank’s independence’.
Opposition BNP sided with Yunus and demanded the Bank be kept as it is.
The US has also sided with the Bank and Yunus. Yunus had supported the
Opposition’s demand of a non-party caretaker government to supervise
the national election — drawing flak from the ruling party.
Fakhrul spoke about how the microcredit institution had helped in
women empowerment and fighting poverty.
He said the institution had earned Bangladesh international acclaim.
The Grameen Bank Ordinance-1983 made the microcredit institution
accountable only to the government and not to the Bangladesh Bank.
As such, the Grameen Bank earlier had only submitted a financial
report every year to the government.
Now it will have to submit another to the central bank after the Bill
becomes law and that will leave the apex bank with powers of oversight
and scrutiny.
A recent BBC investigation revealed scores of poor in Bangladesh are
turning to selling organs to pay off microcredit lenders who charged
exorbitant interests.
The two largest microcredit lenders in Bangladesh, BRAC and Grameen
Bank, had denied charges of pressurising borrowers. -bdnews24.com
