The Bangladeshi government has called on Nobel peace laureate (vinder) and micro credit pioneer Muhammad Yunus to retire, BBC online reports Tuesday.
Finance Minister Abul Maal Abdul Muhith told the BBC that Professor Yunus has reached the normal retirement age for executives at private banks.
The latest comments reflect an increasing divide between the Awami League-led government and Prof Yunus. He set up the Grameen Bank about three decades ago to provide microcredit – small loans to the poor.
Mr Muhith said that the government began talking to Prof Yunus around a year ago about who would succeed him and redefining the bank’s role.
The finance minister pointed out that according to Bangladeshi rules, the retirement age for executives at private banks had been set at 65 and that Prof Yunus was five years beyond that.
But the minister conceded that retirement rules in Bangladesh had not been imposed for many years.
The Grameen Bank came under the spotlight late last year when a Norwegian television documentary alleged that aid money was wrongly transferred to another part of the bank in the mid-1990s. The bank denied all the charges.
Later, the Norwegian government, one of its main donors, gave an all-clear to the bank. But the Bangladeshi government set up a review committee in January to look into the bank’s affairs.
– Professor Yunus told me, that if he withdraws now, the whole of Grameen will collapse, Mr Muhith said.
The finance minister’s comments came days after supporters of Prof Yunus – including former Irish president Mary Robinson and former World Bank president James Wolfensohn – launched Friends of Grameen to “save the bank from a government takeover”.
The bank’s borrowers and savers own 75 per cent of the company, while the government has a 25 per cent stake.
