"Poverty is the biggest hurdle on our road to progress," Khaleda said this while she was inaugurating the National Social Service Academy at Agargaon yesterday.

Khaleda reiterated that poverty alleviation is the immediate goal of the government and determined it as the biggest social service.

She also said overall and balanced development is not possible without integrating the backward and downtrodden people in the mainstream of economic activities.

Presided over by Social Welfare Secretary Kazi Monwarul Huq, the function was also addressed by Minister for Social Welfare Ali Ahsan Mohammad Mujahid, Advocate Khandakar Mahbubuddin Ahmed and Director General of Social Welfare Directorate Hafizul Islam Miah.

Ministers, MPs, diplomats, representatives of donor agencies and leaders of social welfare organisations were present at the function.

The prime minister in her speech said her government is implementing social welfare programmes and urged all to stand beside the less fortunate, helpless and rootless.

"We not only consider as our state responsibility to show respect to them, help them become self-reliant and provide strength and courage but also look at it as humanitarian responsibility towards fellowmen."

She said that lending programmes have been expanded to increase the earnings of the poorest of the poor, such as distressed women and children, orphans and handicapped.

She expressed her optimism that the number of poorer sections of people in the country would be reduced half by the year 2015.

Khaleda hoped that the social service academy would act as a national institution of raising trained field workers on different aspects of social services. She said the present trend of moral erosion and idleness misguided a section of youths and urged the trained social workers to provide proper guidance and counselling to those and bring back to the mainstream of society to raise them as creative citizens.

She said her government has further expanded the 'social safety net' under which programmes of food for work, housing for the homeless, rehabilitation of acid-burned, physically handicapped and risk-facing due to natural disaster are being implemented.

Khaleda said that these steps reduced the number of poor, as reflected in the human development index.

She said under the social safety net, the government expanded the old-age allowance, raising the amount to Tk 165 from Tk 100 each. The government raised the number of beneficiaries of old-age allowance to 13.15 lakh from 4.15 lakh, and enhanced the allowance for each insolvent freedom fighter to Tk 500 from Tk 300.

She went around the stalls set up on the premises to display handicrafts and other materials produced by various social-welfare organisations.

The prime minister unveiled the plague of the six-storied building of the academy that will train up the poor in various technical trades. The project cost Tk 6.12 crore.