Home ›› 22 Dec 2022 ›› Front
Ignoring the widespread criticism from different strata of society, the primary and mass education ministry is again selecting a single Mobile Financial Service (MFS) provider to disburse stipends among the primary school students across the country.
The ministry recently approved a proposal to renew the agreement with Nagad Limited to disburse the stipends of fiscal year 2022-2023, although guardians of the students want to get the service through their preferred MFS.
The ministry’s decision violates the stipend-disbursing guideline prepared by the ministry itself and published in February last, said guardians of primary school students. They said Section 8 of “Guidelines for Implementation of Primary Education Stipend Programme, 2021”, states that the stipend money would be disbursed through the MFS preferred by the guardian of the student.
“If the government now renews the agreement with Nagad, it will definitely violate the guideline,” said the guardian of a student on condition of anonymity.
Meanwhile, the Directorate of Primary Education (DPE) on December 5 sent a letter to the primary and mass education ministry, urging to revise the primary education stipend guidelines before renewing the agreement with Nagad.
In previous years, hundreds of guardians had bitter experience while receiving the stipend money through Nagad.
As Nagad was the only MFS to disburse the stipend, the parents were forced to open a new Nagad account to withdraw the money.
Marufa Rahman, mother of two students of a government primary school in Chauddagram upazila in Cumilla, said “The government is giving the stipends through MFS in order to smoothen the payment process, but selecting a singles MFS has made the process more difficult. It would be easier for us if we receive the stipend through our preferred MFS.”
“We were forced to open a Nagad account to withdraw the stipend against our will. We urge the government to keep scope of withdrawing the stipend through any MFS,” she added.
Sources said the primary and mass education ministry published the “Guidelines for Implementation of Primary Education Stipend Programme, 2021” in February last, keeping provision to disburse the stipends through any MFS like bKash, Rocket and Nagad.
But, the ministry later made a u-turn from its own decision, instructing the DPE to renew agreement with Nagad to disburse the stipends.
But in the instruction, the ministry’s secretary gave an opinion in favour of distributing the stipends through any MFS preferred by the guardians.
The secretary also mentioned in his note that the question will be raised if there is a single MFS and it will create unnecessary controversy.
Besides, the state minister of the ministry mentioned in his note that an approval to renew agreement with Nagad was given as per agreement of December 13, 2020. He also mentioned that the stipends implementation guideline can be revised.
DPE Director General Shah Rezwan Hayat told The Business Post, “We are yet to make a final decision regarding selection of a single MFS to distribute the stipends. We are still distributing the previous stipends and after that, we will make a final decision in this matter.”
According to ministry and DPE sources, the government introduced the stipend in 1999 to reduce student dropout rates and retain female students in classes. Now, the government is giving stipends to 1.40 crore students across the country.
From 2016, the government started distributing the stipends through mobile banking service, instead of general banking system, to avoid suffering of guardians of the students.
Initially, the government had given the job to ‘SureCash’ which was the MFS venture of Rupali Bank Limited. But from 2020, Nagad was selected as the single MFS to distribute the stipends.
However, there are many other MFS institutions approved by the Bangladesh Bank, including bkash, Rocket, Mcash, Way, Tap, MyCash, TeleCash, OK Wallet and Islamic Wallet.
Each pre-primary student gets a monthly stipend of Tk 75 while a primary-level student gets Tk 150 per month. A student studying in class 6-8 gets a stipend of Tk 200.
