Staff Correspondent

The Asian Development Bank has come under fire from speakers at a Unicef policy symposium who accused the development finance institution of indirectly catering to the needs of the rich rather than the poor.

"I am concerned about the ADB because it finances dams, highways and other huge infrastructure. Poor people do not need these huge structures," said Naila Kabir of the UK's Institute of Development Studies.

"This sort of financing should be stopped," said Kabir at the concluding session of the symposium, which began on April 15. Unicef organised the regional policy makers' symposium on "Social Protection as a Strategy in Transformative Social Policy" at Sonargaon Hotel.

Talking to bdnews24.com after the conference, Kabir said the ADB had yet to properly understand the nature of poverty, adding that the institution saw the problem only from the top level. "Indirectly they secure the interests of the rich instead of the poor," said Kabir.

She went on to stress the need for the ADB to appoint more social policy makers rather than engineers, saying basic health services had to be secured as a priority for the poor of Bangladesh.

Planning secretary Jafar Ahmed Chowdhury chaired the closing ceremony of the symposium, also addressed by Unicef's Gabriele Kohler and Yoriko Yasukawa of the Unicef New York.

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