Former Grameen Bank Managing Director Muhammad Yunus has said the present crisis in the micro finance institution is temporary.
Alleging that there is an attempt to take over the bank, Yunus has, however, expressed optimism that the institution would overcome the crisis soon.
“I think what is happening over the attempt to take over the Grameen Bank is temporary. We want to get back the bank in its healthy condition,” he said in his address at a reception arranged by expatriate Bangladeshis living in New York on Tuesday.
Yunus’ relations with the Awami League-led government have soured since the latter had removed him from the top-post of the bank on the ground that he surpassed the service age.
Recently he flayed the government for amending Grameen Bank laws.
Nobel laureate Muhammad Yunus had been the MD of the bank since its inception in 1983, until the government removed him from the post in March 2011.
During his 42-minute address, Yunus also spoke on the country’s current political turmoil.
Yunus said the major problem of Bangladesh was that the country had failed to come out of a ‘troubled’ politics.
He hoped the expansion of social business might open up new possibilities in the overall changed world scenario.
Yunus said many had laughed at him when he talked about sending poverty to the museum after 2030.
He said the UN had planned Millennium Development Goal in 2000 and targeted to reduce poor population by half by 2015.
Bangladesh has succeeded in achieving the target in the middle of the current year, he said.
The Nobel laureate announced to pay one million dollar if anybody could find a single poor man in Bangladesh after 2030.
“Many might laugh at me for this declaration as they did 13 years ago. The number of poor people will be halved by 2015 all over the world and the UN will announce its next plan for the next 15 years endorsing my statement,” he said.
The reception was organised to felicitate Yunus for getting Congressional Medal award recently.
Source: Bd news24