The prime minister, Sheikh Hasina, has asked the upazial nirbahi officers to work together with people's representatives, including upazila chairmen, to ensure maximum welfare of the grassroots people.

'No one in the world can do all the jobs alone. You have to work together with the upazila chairmen and other people's representatives for ensuring people's welfare,' she told the UNOs on Saturday. The prime minister was addressing the inaugural function of a two-day training workshop titled 'E-governance, service at doorsteps' arranged for the UNOs by the Prime Minister's Office in collaboration with the United Nations Development Programme at a PMO auditorium.

The training workshop was arranged as part of the Prime Minister's Office-sponsored Access to Information Programme. Sixty UNOs will be given training on e-governance in the first batch. The sessions of the workshop will be held at the Bangladesh Computer Council Bhaban at the city's Agargaon. Hasina said the government would decentralise power more and more to empower people at the grassroots level.

She observed power was very much centralised in Bangladesh, as the country was ruled by many military dictators for a long time after the assassination of Sheikh Mujibur Rahman in 1975. 'As people have elected their own government now in the last December 29 polls, we want to serve them by decentralising the power,' she said. In democracy, people representatives have to keep in touch with the mass people and they have to play their part in functioning of the local government, Hasina said.

Hasina said government officers and people's representatives had their own duties and responsibilities in the local government system. 'We hope all the duties and responsibilities will be discharged with full commitment and integrity,' she told the function. Promising to introduce e-governance from the grassroots level to the central administration, the prime minister revealed that the government had decided to introduce e-tender system to put an end to tender manipulation. Hasina asked the ministries, all government institutions and departments to keep their web sites always updated to provide the latest information to people.

The prime minister said the government wanted to stamp out corruption from all sectors utilising the information technologies. 'We don't want to be known as a corrupt nation in the world as we used to be known during previous governments. Work hard to uphold Bangladesh's image abroad as an honest, hard-working and modern nation,' she said. Hasina said the Awami League had promised to turn Bangladesh into a digital country by 2021, but digital Bangladesh did not mean the use of only computers everywhere.

'Digital Bangladesh is a modern philosophy of using appropriate technology in implementing the government's all pledges, including poverty eradication, ensuring quality education and health facilities, generating employment opportunities for the people,' she said. Prime minister's adviser HT Imam, state minister for science and technology Architect Yafes Osman, cabinet secretary MA Aziz and UNDP country director Stefan Priesner also addressed the inaugural function. Later, the prime minister handed over a laptop to a female UNO in the programme.

-New Age