Education minister Mohibul Hassan Chowdhoury on Sunday told Jatiya Sangsad that the government has a plan to make education free up to class VIII to create opportunity for all in education and to enable all citizens to access education up to class VIII easily.
The minister gave this information to the parliament in reply to a query from ruling Awami League lawmaker M Abdul Latif.
The minister said that the Directorate of Secondary and Higher Education was working on it.
鈥楬opefully, this planning will be implemented within a logical period,鈥� the education minister added.
In reply to a query from AL lawmaker Farida Yasmin, the education minister informed parliament that the post of vice-chancellor of 29 private universities was vacant at present.
The minister said that a total of 114 private universities had permission for running operations at present.
Of them, 105 universities were running educational programmes. In these institutions, vice chancellor post in 29, pro-vice chancellor post in 80, and treasurer post in 35 private universities are vacant, he said.
While replying to another query, the minister said that currently there were 4,613 educational institutions without MPOs across the country.
In response to a question from opposition chief whip Mujibul Haque, the education minister said that an agreement was signed with the Institute of Information and Communication Technology of the Bangladesh University of Engineering on May 12 to detect fake certificates in the name of the Technical Education Board.
The experts of that department had already started the process of detecting fake certificates. All fake certificates detected would be cancelled and further action would be taken, the minister said.
In response to the question of independent lawmaker Pankaj Nath, state minister for primary and mass education Rumana Ali said that the number of primary schools with less than 50 students across the country is 944.
Meanwhile, social welfare minister Dipu Moni informed the parliament that the government had planned to create a database of beggars across the country.
The database would be used to gather information about 鈥榞enuine鈥� beggars whom the government would give various training and counselling with an aim to eradicate begging, said the social welfare minister.
Dipu Moni said that no accurate statistics were available on the people living in Dhaka city without an address and depending on begging.
Distresses arising from situations, including river erosion, extreme poverty, disease and illiteracy, pushed some people to take up begging who were in real need of help. But some unemployed people chose begging as a way of easy income, the minister also said.