The cabinet yesterday approved a proposal for amending an ordinance to give more powers to the Grameen Bank chairman to choose the managing director of the microlender.The amendment to the Grameen Bank Ordinance 1983 will undermine the autonomy of the bank started by Nobel Peace Prize laureate Prof Muhammad Yunus.
It will give the bank's chairman, always picked by the government, almost absolute powers to appoint the organisation's chief executive sidelining other members of the Grameen Bank board.
In a statement yesterday, Prof Yunus expressed shock over the government move and said, "I am very disheartened to see that the poor is being deprived of the ownership of the bank they run and of the power to exercise their ownership."
President Zillur Rahman will soon issue an ordinance with the latest changes as parliament is now in recess, Cabinet Secretary M Musharraf Hossain Bhuiyan told reporters coming out of a cabinet meeting at the Secretariat.