DGFP to fill vacancies by May
Says new DG
The family planning directorate is making an effort to complete the recruitment process for its vacant posts by next three months, said its newly appointed Director General (DG) MM Neaz Uddin yesterday.
At a meeting with the journalists at the Directorate General of Family Planning (DGFP) office, the DG admitted that activities under the family planning and population control programme have become slow due to shortage of more than 8,000 manpower for a few years.
Moreover, a major portion of the family welfare assistants and visitors are about to retire. So, for them it is difficult to go from door to door providing family planning services.
To cope up with the setback, the DGFP plans to establish a monitoring cell to improve domiciliary services, the DG added.
The high ups of the directorate blamed conflict between cadre and non-cadre services, delay in promotion of the family planning staff, and the government's lack of initiatives for the organisation's poor performance which led to unsatisfying result in population control.
They also held responsible the improper date-base system used to store population information of municipalities and city corporations.
"Though the use of contraceptives has been increased much in 30 years and the total fertility rate (TFR) has been reduced, it was seen that the TFR is higher among the poor comparing to the higher income group," said director of information evaluation and monitoring (IEM).
The IEM director said the government should bring the poor especially the urban poor under the family planning services.
Citing the study of Human Development Research Centre, he said 23 percent couples are not getting access to family planning services.
Z I Mamun, head of news of ATN Bangla, moderated the meeting.
Representatives from different print and electronic media also spoke at the meeting.
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