Bangladesh, Burma and the Rohingya crisis 47 Bangladesh’s uneven distribution of the wealth created by its GDP growth, telling us: “The top 10% of the country have sped away … we are talking about luxury lifestyles that most of us cannot imagine. The bottom 40% have dropped significantly. The middle class, around 50%, is … retaining its consumption from before. You have a real inequality brewing and increasing.”134 108. There also seem to be inequalities arising from the competing attractions of continuing education and immediate employment in Bangladesh. Farah Kabir, ActionAid Bangladesh, pointed to the fact that the country had about 400,000 people at mid-manager level from India and other parts of south Asia due to a lack of educational attainment in Bangladesh schools. She said that these were not imported ‘experts’ but people with basic management skills. There had been a huge improvement in enrolment and access to a basic education but too soon the government’s priorities kicked in—or those of struggling parents—and young people were pushed towards “vocational or the overseas market” (not helped by legislation legalising full-time employment at age 14).135 109. The ‘overseas market’ was important because remittances (money sent home by nationals living and working abroad) have been important as a source of foreign exchange ($12.7 billion in 2016/17136). Meenakshi Ganguly, Human Rights Watch, South Asia, told us that the Bangladesh government’s approach was “pretty much competing with other countries to undercut the wages for these people to travel”;137 and the “poorest record” in trying to protect their rights and welfare. The emigrant population is significant with 750,000 Bangladeshis migrating to Saudi Arabia, Qatar, Oman, Singapore and Malaysia in 2017 alone—not far off the number of Rohingya arriving after ‘deportation’ from Burma. In total, almost nine million Bangladeshis are estimated to be working overseas, of whom a majority are located in the Middle East. 110. There was also the enduring issue of gender inequality. Although, we were told that Bangladesh now has more girls in school than boys, that was on the basis of enrolment. The drop-out rate from secondary education for girls was close to 50%; the equivalent for boys was about 41%. This feeds through to the workplace and business environment. In the ready-made garment sector (80% female employees), men would be likely to be earning twice what was paid to a woman and occupy many times more supervisory positions. In the small business sector, it would appear that men earn about 80% more than women. 111. With DFID’s focus on tackling poverty and ‘leaving no-one behind’, unsurprisingly, a substantial portion of the overall Bangladesh programme is aimed at tackling the poorest and, in doing so, mitigating the inequality of mainstream economic growth. On the upstream side, £197.4 million was allocated to three education programmes, overall spanning 2008 to 2020, aimed at primary education, English language skills and reaching under-privileged young people with basic and vocational education aimed at employability. More directly aimed at improving the livelihoods and economic opportunities of women, the poor and disadvantaged populations are a basket of programmes, covering different planning periods, which include objectives such as assisting solo, micro and small 134 135 136 137 Q106 A joint Bangladesh government/ILO survey of child labour identified 3.45 million working children of whom 1.7 fell under the definition of child labour. 15% lower than recent performance Q106