Shamima Chowdhury
Dear Professor Yunus,
You have been claiming that you are not a blood sucker of poor people and instead, you claimed that you made 10 million poor people owners of your Grameen Bank. Don’t you feel that these are simple lies. When you lend micro loans to the poor borrowers, you charge them 10 taka each and thus they become owner of the bank but you never ever share a single penny of the Grameen profit with them and instead you divert those profits to your other companies. Did you ever pay a penny as dividends? Yet you claim them as the owner of the Grameen Bank. Are we fools? It’s a shame on you.
You are very smart and you managed to get loans from institutions or governments at 1% or 2% percent interest rates and then you lend those funds to poor people at 22% or 27% and you boast of assisting them. In many cases, you get funds as “grants” or free money and yet you charge them too much. Shame on you.
You know that those who borrow loans from you, only a mere 9% could maintain their normal life and the rest 91% generally loses their land, their wealth, their household properties and basically their all possessions. Your credit collectors normally take away their cows, their chicken, their roof tops, their possessions and in the process, your borrowers become more destitute. Many committed suicides as their all possessions were snatched away from them. Instead of reducing poverty and enhancing empowerment, your system forces these poor women to be more poor and ever dependent. When you got the Nobel Prize, you assured the world that “in future poverty would be available only in the museums “. Unfortunately, the poverty is a reality and your system is pushing many into extreme poverty. Don’t you feel ashamed of stealing their little possessions and their normal upbringing?
You proudly claim that you don’t own a house or a car but you never mention that your companies including the Grameen Bank pay for you and for your families free accommodation, your daily expenses, your travel cost, your food, your clothing, your hospitality changes, and it provides you free cars, free telephones, even your kids educational expenses, etc. Since your companies pay for everything, why would you own a car or a house? Are you not sucking the blood of the poor people?
During the devastating flood in 1998, Sheikh Hasina government provided your bank $400 million as grant and you lend those fund to poor people at a profit. She also granted you the monopoly business of the Grameen Telecom with the understanding that you would share its profits with the poor people but you never did. Instead you established nearly 48 business companies using those tax-exempt fund and also took advantage of the Grameen name brand. Are these not unethical?
After becoming the Chief Adviser you influenced the government to withdraw all the court verdicts against you and defrauded the country by not paying 666 crore taka taxes, and cheated your employees by not paying their legal dues amounting to millions of taka. After thorough cross examination, the court gave verdict against you and you accepted them. But after becoming the Chief Adviser, you nullified all the verdicts against you. Is it fair? Don’t you think people are blind? They know that you misused and abused the government power.
Not only that, are you not ashamed of the fact that you after becoming the Chief Adviser, you approved for yourself and your relatives (1) one university, (2) one lucrative manpower business license and (3) appointed a few of your blood relatives in lucrative government jobs without following the due processes?
Dr. Muhammad Yunus, you are a world renowned person and a Nobel Laurate. We expected honest behavior from you. We had lot of expectations from you, as you are our only Nobel Laureate. But you failed all of us miserably. Your leadership instead of organizing a free, fair and all inclusive election, are now busy in looting the nation’s wealth and destroying all legal institutions in the name of reform. During the last eight months, you looted 90 thousand crore taka from the stock market. Although remittance has sharply increased and government purchase of inputs drastically reduced, yet the nation’s foreign exchange reserves have not increased as your administration is busy in money laundering abroad. Due to your policies, thousands of factories have shut down, thousands have been laid off, unemployment sharply increased, inflation is still high, and since you stopped all social protection programs, poverty has sharply increased. The World Bank reports that an additional 3 million people are being pushed into below poverty level and nation’s GDP rate which was expected to be 7.2% now estimated to be 3.3% only. Since there is no new investment taking place, and nation’s revenue collection declining, we are afraid of its stability. You also miserably failed to maintain law and order. Total lawlessness and anarchy is still pervasive.
You may advise your government to come up with false and misleading statistics and given your Draconian media rules, no one would dare to challenge you out of fear of life and detention but the fact of the matter is, you are destroying the nation’s economy and the country itself. You should be ashamed of yourself and you should quit in disgrace. Once we were proud of you as you are our only Nobel Laureate. But you disgrace us and the nation too. You should quit and leave the country at once. You have a humble face and you talk sweet and nice but your actions and behavior are very selfish and evil motivated. Your greed and lust for power will destroy you soon. Your legacy will never be commendable. Thank you
Writer :Shamima Chowdhury, An example professional