The government has taken a project to build 10 secondary schools at 10 upazilas of haor areas of the country.
The estimated cost of the project is Tk 641.37 crore, of which Tk 76,000 is funded by the Saudi Fund for Development.
Superintendent engineer Md Asaduzzaman of the department of educational engineering, Dhaka has been given the responsibility to conduct a survey in this regard.
The information has been revealed in a letter signed by deputy secretary of planning-2 of the secondary and higher education division of the ministry of education SM Imrul Hasan on June 18.
It said that the department of education engineering under the secondary and higher education division had assigned additional responsibilities to superintendent of the head office of the department of education engineering Md Asaduzzaman as the 鈥榩roject director鈥� to examine the feasibility of establishing 10 secondary schools in selected haor areas.
According to sources, a preliminary proposal was sent to the planning commission on April 9 last year to implement the project in 423 haor-covered areas 鈥� Kishoreganj, Netrakona, Habiganj, Sunamganj, Sylhet, Moulvibazar and Brahmanbaria.
A meeting of the Project evaluation committee was held at the planning commission on May 20 on that proposal. In the meeting, it was decided to have a neutral, skilled professional organisation to complete the feasibility study and send the project documents back to the planning commission. The study proposal has been prepared in light of that decision.
Sources said that in July last year, the SFD mission representatives had urged to complete the survey work within three months during their visit to Bangladesh.
In that context, a request was made in the meeting to urgently include the survey work of the 鈥榮econdary schools at selected Upazila Sadar in Haor area鈥� project in the new unauthorised project list of the current fiscal year鈥檚 Annual Development Plan. The education adviser also agreed to this.
Md Asaduzzaman told BSS that the decision was taken to establish the schools to bring the light of education to the backward people of the haor areas. A survey was underway to find out where and how those could be established.
According to sources, the big haor of Kishoreganj district consists of Ashtagram, Itna, Mithamoin and Nikli upazilas.
The people of the vast area of 990,396 hectares lag behind all other areas of Bangladesh.
The literacy rate of the people living in the seven unions of Ashtagram, eight unions of Itna, eight unions of Mithamoin and eight unions of Nikli is 37.4 per cent, 24.8 per cent, 31.9 per cent and 23.9 per cent respectively whereas the literacy rate of Bangladesh is 71 per cent.
