London: Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina has sought more support from Great Britain to keep Bangladesh’s tremendous development and advancement ongoing.

‘Bangladesh is making impressive progress in every field. But we need more assistance from Great Britain as it’s a great country and has been supporting us for a long time. I hope that it would continue its support for the people of Bangladesh,’ she said.

The Prime Minister said this while addressing a reception at the office of the Commonwealth Parliamentary Association (CPA), UK Chapter, at British Parliament here on Monday afternoon. Chairman of All Party Parliamentary Group on Bangladesh Keith Vaz accorded the reception to the lawmakers who were elected for the first time in British Parliament.

PM’s ICT Advisor Sajeeb Wazed Joy, Labour Party MP and granddaughter of Father of the Nation Bangabandhu Sheikh Mujibur Rahman Tulip Rezwana Siddique and a number of British House of Commons members also spoke at the function.

PM’s Media Advisor Iqbal Sobhan Chowdhury, State Minister for Foreign Affairs Md Shahriar Alam, Radwan Mujib Siddique Bobby, Bangladesh High Commissioner to Britain Md Abdul Hannan and PM’s Press Secretary AKM Shameem Chowdhury were present on the occasion.

Some 30 MPs including Rushana Ali, Dr Rupa Huq, Jimi Fitzpatrick, Anne Main, Kate Osamer, Catherin West, Jonathon Shaw, Andy Slater, Baroness Paula Uddin and CPA UK Chapter Chief Executive Andrew Tuggy were present.

Describing Britain as a major development partner of Bangladesh, Sheikh Hasina expressed the hope that Bangladesh and Britain would continue to work together for mutual benefits of the two countries.

Reiterating her firm determination to build Bangladesh as a poverty-free developed and prosperous country, the Prime Minister said her government has been striving to achieve the goal. ‘Our vision is very clear that we want to establish Bangladesh as a poverty-free prosperous country,’ she said.

Responding to the speech of a British parliament member in which he raised the issue of safety of the workers in Bangladesh’s readymade garment industry, Sheikh Hasina said her government always works for the downtrodden people like workers, farmers and the common people.

‘The government has started taking care how the workers can get a good atmosphere in their workplace,’ she said. Noting the government efforts for further reducing the poverty rate, the Prime Minister said the present government wants to cut the poverty rate by 10 per cent further during its tenure.

‘Poverty rate has been slashed to 22.7 per cent and we want to reduce it by 10 per cent more in the next three and a half years and I am confident that we would be able to achieve the goal,’ she said.

In this connection, Sheikh Hasina mentioned that when her previous government assumed office in 2009, there was a difficult time as the world was experiencing economic recession at that time.

‘It was a very tough time to keep up GDP growth rate. But we were lucky that we could maintain over 6 per cent GDP growth. This year, the GDP growth rate is 6.51 per cent,’ she said.