According to an analysis done by Bonik Barta, Dhaka's newly inaugurated Jatbari Flyover (Mayor Mohammad Hanif Flyover) is the MOST expensive flyover in the world - costing 2.1 billion BDT per km, 337% more expensive compared to Kolkata's Batanagar Flyover.
3.7% of Bangladesh's population, or 6 million drug addicts, spend 70 million taka everyday on drugs. Although drug abuse is much lower in Bangladesh compared to India and Pakistan, it is a growing at an alarming rate, employing 100,000 people.
While we push each other around in the cities fighting to get a
slightly larger piece of the pie we don't need, let us remember that 46%
of children in Bangladesh stay hungry everyday. Bangladesh has the
world's HIGHEST malnutrition rate.
Bangladesh has one of the lowest nurse to people and hospital bed to people ratios in the world, and a strikingly high incidence of self funded healthcare.
17.11% of all deaths in Bangladesh is a result of heart disease - the proportion is far greater than the global rate of 11.24%. But, heart disease is the top most cause of death. Check out how many lives are lost to other diseases, and to road accidents, which has made its way to the top 10 causes of death.
There is finally a decision on minimum wage for RMG workers - BDT 5,300, a decision that BGMEA has recently accepted, although this is BDT 800 greater than their proposal of BDT 4,500. In lieu of their acceptance, BGMEA has made requests for favourable policies that outweigh the additional cost of BDT 800 by 23%.
Bangladesh in Numbers is extremely grateful to Zahid Hussain, Senior Economist of the World Bank, for the analysis used in this infographic.
20% of all Bangladeshis (33 million) now access the internet - a phenomenal growth from only 617,300 in 2009! 95% of us access the internet from cell phones.
Most of us stay home or move about cautiously during hartals, trying our best to avoid violence. For the 5,000 who have lost their jobs from hotels and tourist services in Cox's Bazar, hartal has dealt them a fate far worse than the wrath of an angry mob. It has robbed them of their livelihoods.
Did you know? Bangladesh has 110 million active mobile phone subscribers (67.5% of the population), with 42% using Grameenphone, 25% using Banglalink, and 22% using Robi. A 10% rise in mobile phone use is correlated with 1.2% increase in GDP!!
Let Dhaka's modern ways of life not be an excuse for us to be oblivious to how women are really treated in Bangladesh. Bangladesh in numbers presents the ugly truth about child marriage. According to Plan Bangladesh and ICDDR,B, 64% of all women in Bangladesh between the ages of 20-24 were married before the age of 18.
Following the BDR carnage in Feb 2009, 846 were brought to trial. And now, 152 are to hang for murder, 161 to serve life sentence, 262 to serve 3 to 10 years, and 271 have been acquitted.
Garment manufacturers have threatened to close down if they are forced to pay anything over Tk 4,500 as monthly wage to workers. Only 20 percent of the country’s 3.6 million-odd garment workers fall under the category of minimum wage.
