Good governance key to job generation: Yunus

Nobel Laureate Muhammad Yunus poses with diplomats at a programme organised by Yunus Centre marking the Social Business Day at Bangabandhu International Conference Centre in Dhaka on Thursday. — New Age photo

Nobel laureate Muhammad Yunus on Thursday said good governance was one of the key elements which could help create employment opportunities for generations to come.

‘Good governance has immense strength,’ he said while speaking at a programme marking the Social Business Day organised by Yunus Centre in the capital.
Social business should be another way along with innovative technologies, he said, adding that generation employment for millions was a big challenge under the present economic system, he said.
Yunus has been propagating the idea of social business by which, he said, entrepreneurs would focus more on job creation rather than profit making. The idea came after he institutionalised the collateral free micro-credit and won Nobel Peace Prize jointly with the Grameen Bank in 2006.
Yunus refused to take questions from the reporters.
The inaugural session was attended and addressed, among others, by US ambassador Marcia Bernicat, UK high commissioner Robert Gibson, Chinese ambassador Ma Mingqiang, Swedish ambassador Johan Frisell and senior consultant at prime minister’s department in Malaysia Sharifah Hapsah Shahabudin.
Yunus said the world must show zero tolerance to poverty, unemployment and carbon emission for sustainable development, the next new agenda of the UN after conclusion of millennium development goal this year.
The theme of the 6th version of the Social Business Day was ‘We are not job-seekers, we are job-givers: Turning unemployment into entrepreneurship’.
According to Yunus Centre the day-long event was attended by more than 1,600 participants, including over 250 from 30 countries.

Source: New Age