Prime minister Tarique Rahman on Tuesday inaugurated the government’s landmark ‘Family Card’ programme to ensure women empowerment in the country as he distributed cards among them at the inauguration ceremony at T&T playground in Banani, adjacent to Korail slum, in Dhaka.

Tarique handed over the cards to 17 women and reached out the money to accounts of 37,567 women in 14 places of different districts by pressing button on laptop.

Prime minister said the government will bring four crore families, headed by women, under the Family Card programme within the next five years.

He said the government has to follow rules and regulations in taking any initiative, and as part of those rules and regulations, it has to take pilot projects first.

In the first phase, 37,567 women received family cards. Every beneficiary is getting Tk 2,500 per month.

Under the pilot programme, beneficiaries of the city’s Karail slum, Sattala slum, Bhasantek slum, Mirpur Circle or Shah Ali’s ward-8, Alimia’s Tech Slum and Baganbari Slum received family cards on the day.

In addition, this programme was launched in Pangsha of Rajbari, Patiya of Chattogram, Bancharampur of Brahmanbaria, Lama of Bandarban, Khalishpur of Khulna, Charfasion of Bhola, Dirai of Sunamganj, Bhairab of Kishoreganj, Bogura Sadar, Lalpur of Natore, Thakurgaon Sadar and Nawabganj of Dinajpur.

Tarique said empowering women is crucial as it is quite impossible to advance the country leaving half of the population behind.

‘Today, we want to empower that educated female society economically and to make them economically solvent,’ he said.

To this end, he said, the incumbent government has taken plans to empower women and as a part of it, today the Family Card programme was introduced across Bangladesh.

For the pilot implementation up to June 2026, the government has allocated Tk 38.07 crore, of which Tk 25.15 crore will be distributed as direct cash support and Tk 12.92 crore will be used for programme implementation, including data collection, development of the online system and card production.

Noting that Bangladesh is their first and last resort, the prime minister said the expectations of the country’s people are high from the incumbent elected government.

‘Even if, at the same time, if we consider the reality and the contemporary affairs, the situation in the Middle East-if we consider everything…we will definitely not change our position from our promises at all. ‘Maybe due to the contemporary global situation, in some cases, it may take us more time to implement the promises,’ he said.

Tarique urged the countrymen to face the entire situation with patience. ‘Let us build our country beautifully with patience.’

The prime minister also hoped that his government would be able to introduce ‘Farmer Card’ programme within next month.

‘We have also started the work on the Farmer Card. InshaAllah, just as we were able to hand over family cards to 37,000 women, in today’s event, in the same way, within the next month we will be able to hand over Farmer Cards to many other farmer brothers, InshaAllah,’ he said.

Zubaida Rahman, spouse of Tarique, social welfare minister Abu Zafar Md Zahid Hossain, state minister for social welfare Farzana Sharmin, social welfare secretary Mohammad Abu Yusuf and Dhaka North City Corporation administrator Shafiqul Islam Khan were present, among others, on the occasion.