A draft population policy advocates introducing "single-child families" at national level by 2015 to avoid a serious socio-economic debacle due to the country's ever-increasing population.

The draft policy, now in the final stage with the health and family welfare ministry, strongly suggests involvement of at least 20 other ministries for its implementation.

To speed up family planning activities in the country, the government has taken the initiative to formulate the policy focusing on one child per family instead of current average of 2.7, said Health and Family Welfare Minister AFM Ruhal Haque.

He added, "Overpopulation is a burden for the country. If we fail to achieve our target to reduce the present birth rate, it will soon be difficult to meet the basic demands of people. We may even fail to achieve the Millennium Development Goals by its targeted period of 2015."

The Directorate General of Family Planning (DGFP) under the health ministry prepared the draft "Population Policy 2009" to popularise the slogan "no more than two children, one is best".

According to the draft policy, the parents who have only one child would be provided with due preference in all state facilities including government assistance during admission to educational institutions. They would also be provided with financial grants and given priority during issuance of VGF/VGD cards.

DGFP Director General Abdul Qayyum said the country at present has a population of 14.88 crore which increases by 18-20 lakh each year.

The growing population would create a huge pressure on food security, education, health, housing, sewerage system, power and energy and other sectors, he observed.

"So, we need to address the issue properly by upgrading the population policy 2004 and ensuring its proper implementation," Qayyum added.

The policy will also encourage every fertile woman to give birth to only one girl child during her total reproduction age. As the people in the country take several children desiring sons, this move may help stop the population boom.

"We have already completed consultation meetings with the divisional family planning employees and other stakeholders on the draft policy," Qayyum told The Daily Star.

"After holding detailed discussions and consulting recommendations of experts and physicians, we'll finalise the policy to make the programme a success."

Apart from the health and family welfare ministry, 20 other ministries will also be engaged in the government's bid to control the population growth.

The ministries are primary and mass education, education, LGRD and cooperatives, finance, planning, agriculture, information, social welfare, women and children affairs, youth and sports, cultural affairs, environment and forest, food and disaster management, home affairs, labour and employment, religious affairs, land, industries, public works and science and information communication technology.

The health ministry will lead the population control programme in association with the other ministries and stakeholders including non-government organisations. The programme mainly emphasises advocacy and campaigns to raise awareness about overpopulation and benefits of one child.

The education ministry is likely to include the family planning issues in the academic curriculum, the agriculture ministry may use their field workers to launch campaigns for small families of the farmers, while the information ministry would direct all television and print media to broadcast and publish special reports on population.

The religious affairs ministry in its initiatives may ask the religious leaders to speak about the population, family planning and the health of mother and child, among other issues.

An inter-ministerial and evaluation committee named National Population Council (NPC) headed by the prime minister has already been formed to formulate the policy. The council also includes the ministers and secretaries concerned, divisional chiefs, heads of leading NGOs, population experts, sociologists and public health experts.

The first population policy was formulated in 1976, which identified the population problem as the number one national problem.

After that the fertility rate declined significantly and the nation achieved a remarkable success in family planning.

In the past three decades, use of contraceptives by married women increased from eight percent to 56 percent, according to the Bangladesh Demographic and Health Survey 2007.

The government should introduce a ministry to address the population issue to develop people into skilled manpower, not only to raise awareness of having less children, Prof Nurun Nabi of Population Science Department of Dhaka University told The Daily Star.

The DGFP is now mainly addressing the contraceptive issues, he said adding, "What about the existing 15-16 crore people of our small country? Everything including the means of people's survival should be addressed by a ministry."