Education is the backbone of a nation. Indeed it is the most significant driving force of development in this world. After liberation of Bangladesh and during the last couple of decades, the government has been setting and expanding educational institutions but facilities so far created have measurably failed to meet the growing needs of the people. From pre-liberation time, the private sector has been supplementing the government efforts that are still going on. Previously educational institutions were not set up and run by profit motive but now it is. The new educational institutions are charging exorbitant charges from students. Formally the owners of the institutions do not take charges in cash or in kind but take those informally.
Students from service-holder families have no alternative but to study for a living. They are confronting acute hardship to pay the exorbitant fees and other expenditures on education. The fees and other charges of private educational institutions particularly at higher secondary, under-graduate and graduate levels are so high nowadays that even the middle income group of people is facing huge difficulties to pay those. The Education Minister recently asked the private universities to fix fees and other charges at levels that are affordable to general masses. The Chancellor of the universities have urged in several convocation ceremonies of different private universities to reduce tuition and other charges but in vain.
In these circumstances, the government needs to come forward to bear some financial load of the guardians. It can exempt the education expenditure of dependents from taxable income of the service-holder guardians, who formally have to pay to private colleges and universities as tuition and other charges against their students. Excluding formal tuition and other fees of private educational institutions from taxable income of a service-holder guardian will give at least a little relief in these days of high prices of commodities.
We would like to urge the government to exempt formal tuition and other charges that a service-holder guardian pays to private university for his student son and daughter from his taxable income from the national budget 2013-14 fiscal year.
