“The world doesn’t approve getting respect by force so you all must perform well to get people’s respect. Collective effort is very important. There shouldn’t be any compromise in good governance,” said Tazul.

He came up with the remarks at the inauguration ceremony of a daylong workshop at the auditorium of Public Health Engineering Department on turning UPs into a more effective and people-friendly institutions.

The Minister urged everyone to work together to take the country forward.

“The activity of the local government is very important for the development of the country. Bangabandhu took many initiatives to develop local government. We have to work together, increase public involvement and attach importance to every opinion to speed up its activities,” Tazul added.

He said the quality of chairmen and members is very important to accelerate UP activities.

“The people have to be respected since they elect members, chairmen and MPs. We all must work hard to achieve
our (country’s development) goals,” he said.

LGRD’s senior secretary Helal Uddin Ahmed said, “The government hiked salaries of UP officials to speed up activities. Now several committees are needed at UP level to further improve their activities.”

LGRD Additional Secretary Begum Roxana Quader presided over the function while Divisional Commissioner Md Mustafizur Rahman spoke as special guest at the event.

Roxana said they emphasised  on mainly eight topics in the workshop to serve over 70,000 people of 4569 UPs and ensure accountability.

The topics are---UPs’ funding and financial management, participatory plan and budget making, Ups’ annual audit and efficiency assessment system, ways of increasing own income in UPs, training for increasing capacity of UPs, overall monitoring and involvement of field administration, Ups’ existing laws and problems of applying rules and their challenges of using information technology.