Sajeeb Ahmed Wazed Joy, has taken it upon himself to manage loan on easy terms for building the Hi-Tech Park in Gazipur, north of Dhaka City.
“There won’t be any problem if the World Bank does not lend on easy terms. I will manage you money (loan),” he said, speaking at the inauguration of E-Filing System at the ICT Division at Agargaon’s BCC Bhaban on Tuesday.
“What the World Bank wants will not be accepted. They want to dictate to us when we seek loans. This country is ours. Whatever we want will be done.”In 2012, Joy’s mother Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina took it up with the United Nations to amend the World Bank’s lending policies after the row over the financing of the Padma bridge project.
“The World Bank lends us and we pay it back. They don’t lend to us for free,” Joy said.
“We do not want any high-tech factory in a hi-tech park. We want such a park where a software industry and skilled labour force could be built,” he said.
“We want to spend money separately on software industry,” Joy said, pointing out that he will spell out details on Wednesday, when he would visit the site of the hi-tech park at Gazipur’s Kaliakoir.
“(Bangladesh) has to be taken forward in software development. For that we need at least 20,000 IT experts.”
Skilled manpower could be built in the information and technology (IT) sector and exported abroad within five years, Joy said.
The present remittance would shoot up if it was really possible to develop skilled IT manpower and send them abroad, he said.
Joy, himself an IT expert, also expressed annoyance with Bangladesh Telecommunications Company Ltd for its failure to implement different projects properly.
Posts, Telecommunications and ICT Minister Abdul Latif Siddique, State Minister Junaid Ahmed Polok, among others, were present. – bdnews24.com
