BESO offers voluntary professional expertise

A British development agency came up with a proposal for offering professional expertise voluntarily to organisations in less-developed communities that cannot afford to hire commercial consultants for helping their productive activities.

'It aims to help developing countries achieve economic independence, self- sustaining growth and a higher standard of living,' said Tom Harrison, International Programme Director of British Executive Service Overseas(BESO), who concluded his three-day visit to Bangladesh yesterday.

Bangladesh can be one of the best places where they can engage their expertise as human resources can be an important asset here if they have proper training and skill, which BESO can help, Tom said this while he was talking to journalists on Thursday.

During his tour, Tom Harrison met with Harris Chowdhury, political secretary to Prime Minister Khaleda Zia, on January 16 and described their intentions, and aims and objectives for providing their experts voluntarily. Established in UK in 1972, BESO now operates in 84 countries, including Bangladesh.

In Bangladesh BESO completed 70 assignments in different fields--from small business to community health and education. At present, six British experts are working in Bangladesh with six different organisations.

Retired experts from British Services volunteer their services through the organisation, and it has more than 3,600 experts in 1,000-plus categories.

'In Bangladesh we are ready to extend our helping hand to both government and private sector and Bangladesh is a top-priority country to this organisation,' MS Shakil Chowdhury, Resident Representative of BESO, said.

To give it due consideration, BESO is actively considering establishing its regional office in Dhaka, he said.

BESO officials said it especially cares business development service for Small and Medium-scale Enterprises (SMEs), policy and planning, finance management and proper resource utilisation, civil society, agriculture extension and governance.

It also can help clients develop products, increase productivity, marketing and international linking.