Rohingyas should be educated in their mother tongue: Dipu Moni

Education minister Dipu Moni on Thursday said the Rohingya people in Bangladesh should be educated in their mother language tongue.

She made the comment at a seminar to launch the Global Education Monitoring Report 2019.

The report said that among the top 10 countries hosting refugees nine but Bangladesh included the refugees in the national education system and Bangladesh has been reluctant to support non-UN agencies providing language services for Rohingya refugees.

‘We believe their education has to be in their mother tongue and at their own settings,’ she said at a seminar.

The minister chaired the seminar jointly organised by UNESCO Dhaka office and Bangladesh National Commission for UNESCO to unveil the report at the International Mother language Institute in the capital.

This year the report was published with the theme – Migration, displacement and education: Building bridges, not walls.

The report said between late August 2017 and early May 2018, about 7,13,000 Rohingyas arrived in Cox’s Bazar.

Dipu Moni said the forced mass exodus of Rohingyas into Bangladesh was first seen in 1978.

‘The primary focus of our government has been to ensure safe, voluntary and sustainable return of the displaced persons including their children to their own homeland in Rakhine state,’ she added.

The report also said in Bangladesh, between 1997 and 2014, the number of slums increased from 3,000 to 14,000 and in Dhaka only about one-quarter of slums were estimated to have a government school in 2007.

Natural calamities like earthquakes, storms, floods and rising sea level damage 900 schools each year, on average, it also said.

Deputy minister for education Mohibul Hasan Chowdhury said this report was not a conclusive report about the state of education of Bangladesh.

He said stakeholders, government agencies and member states should be engaged in data collection for preparing reports like this.

The programme was attended, among others, by secondary and higher education division senior secretary Md Sohorab Hossain, Technical and Madrasah Education Division secretary Munshi Shahabuddin Ahmed, UNESCO Dhaka office head and representative Beatrice Kaldun and BNCU deputy secretary general Md Monjur Hossian.

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