Indira urges for equal-affordable vaccine access for COVID-19

GBNEWS24 DESK//

State Minister for Women and Children Affairs Fajilatun Nessa Indira has urged local and international communities to give priority in creating business opportunities for developing countries like Bangladesh and job opportunities for the migrants who lost job during pandemic.

At the same time, she has also emphasised on ensuring equal access to universal, equitable, timely and affordable vaccine facilities.

She made the urge on Monday while addressing a high level virtual roundtable meeting organised by the UN Women and Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Denmark titled as “A gender-smart approach to recovering from Covid 19” as a panel discussant.

Other panel discussants of the event are- Nigerian Finance Minister Zainab S. Ahmed, Jamaican Finance Minister Nigel Clarke, Ethiopian State Minister for Finance Yasmin Wohabrebbi, Deputy Managing Director of International Monetary Fund Tao Zhang and Vice President of World Bank Mamta Murthi.

In her speech, Indira elaborated Bangladesh government’s initiatives to develop the country, ensuring women empowerment, rescue plan for country’s people as well as the business and industry sectors from the Covid 19 pandemic and creation of job opportunities for the youths and returnee migrants lost job during the pandemic.

She said that Bangladesh government has announced 21 stimulus packages of Tk one trillion, which is around 4.3 percent of the country’s GDP, for around six crore people, so that they survive during the pandemic and recover the losses of the pandemic.

It has ensured social safety net programmes for 2.5 crore people providing monetary allocation, which is around 16.83 percent of the country’s budgetary allocation.

More than 20 lakh women were given monetary support under its VGD, maternity and lactating mother’s allowances, she said, adding skillness developing programmes for the women has been taken in all 64 districts.

She also mentioned government’s initiative to prevent violence against women installing DNA testing laboratory, enacting law with death penalty for the rapists. At the same time, women empowerment has been ensured in all stages including services in administration, law enforcement agencies, community leaders, elected bodies, NGOs and media houses.