The government has no plan yet to raise the retirement age of agriculturalists in the manner it was done for the scientists of Bangladesh Council of Scientific and Industrial Research (BCSIR).
Food Minister Abdur Razzaque, at a function on Friday, said although the prime minister was willing to raise the age limit for agricultural scientists, it could not be done because of “various reasons.”
He, however, did not mention any of the reasons or anything that could be related to a possible development in the matter.
The government on August 26 decided to raise the retirement age of BCSIR scientists to 67 years, eight years up from the previous 59. About 300 scientists of the institute benefited from the decision which, however, frustrated those working in other organisations.
There are about 1700 agricultural scientists and agronomists across the country who were also expecting a similar raise, given their contribution in accelerating food security especially by developing climate-resilient rice varieties.
After the cabinet meeting which approved the draft BCSIR Act-2013, Cabinet Secretary Mohammad Mosharraf Hossain Bhuiyan said the authorities of other organisations can also have tenures of their scientists extended by submitting proposals.
However, while speaking at the conference organised by Bangladesh Society of Agronomy (BSA), Abdur Razzaque was more focused on the government’s achievements in food security rather than on the matter of retirement age.
He said the government had taken a number of initiatives to bring down the poverty rate to 15% by 2021. “We’ve already attained food security as well as achieving the targets of MDGs.”
After assuming power, Razzaque said, the government in its first cabinet meeting reduced the prices of all non-urea fertilisers to help farmers increase agricultural outputs.
He urged the agro scientists to improve the quality of various products including salinity, cold and drought resilient varieties of crops and to make them popular among farmers.
The minister stressed the need for attracting “brilliant” students and professionals in agriculture sector to further enhance its performance. “Unless more brilliant people were brought into the sector, it would be impossible to develop the sector.”
The agriculturalists in their turn reminded the minister of the government’s assurance of increasing their retirement age, but he had no word of hope to offer to them.
He advised the researchers to make their inventions including new rice and other varieties more production oriented so that the farmers can easily use them.
The available arable land in the country has been decreasing at 1% annually which is about 80,000 hectare, according to the Bangladesh Agricultural Research Institute (Bari).
It also estimates that Bangladesh will be in need of an additional 1.2 million tonnes of food by 2050, to meet the demand.
Besides cereal crops like rice and wheat, the demand for nutritious food has also been increasing in the country as people’s average income has also been increasing, said FH Ansarey, executive director of Advanced Chemical Industries (ACI) Ltd.
The government must put emphasis on technology and high yielding variety crops so that more food could be produced using limited lands, otherwise the situation will go beyond control, he said.
