True story of Grameen Bank and Yunus

[batman]

Professor Muhammad Yunus, after receiving the Nobel Peace Prize came into focal point of global media and now he is pretending to be the neo 'Mother Teresa' of today's world. But, most of the world citizen shall never know the real stories of this man's crockery and how he is continuing to swindle poor people's money for decades.


I had no taste of writing on this bad guy even two days back. But, when I listened to a report in Voice of America on May 1, had to set my fingers on computer key board to investigate and write about the unknown stories of Mohammed Yunus.


Yunus continues to claim himself as a 'Professor'. But, according to several academics in Bangladesh, this man never taught in any of the college or universities in Bangladesh. Who gave him this title remains a mystery unfold.


Grameen Bank, although won the Nobel Peace Prize in 2006, it is well documented fact that, in reality, this organization is a Shylock of modern days. Poor people are lured in borrowing money from this institution while, various severe methods of pressure and social humiliations are applied on the borrowers in extracting interest and the capital amount. Although Yunus claims to give money to poor without interest, it is again well documented that Grameen Bank's rate of interest ranges between 18-30 per cent. Many poor borrowers committed suicide when they failed to repay the interest or loan money. At least two dozen cases are in document where husbands had to sell their wives to brothels for collecting the money to repay the loan and interest to Grameen Bank. Few hundred cases are in document where Grameen Bank people took away tin made houses of poor borrowers as they failed to pay the interest.


Yunus claims that he provided mobile phones to poor women in the villages. Yes, he established a cell phone company named Grameen Phone under joint venture ship with Nortel (Norway). Initially people were forced to pay TK. 7 per minute for all out going calls. Yunus run virtual monopoly business by extracting such high charges from the people of Bangladesh. In villages too, his company charged heavy rates from the poor women. But, when a number of private companies like Banglalink, Aktel, Citicell and Warid came in business, now Grameen Phone has to also reduce the rate to only TK. 0.25 per minute to cope with the competition. Now imagine, before entering competition, this company took 25 times more charges from the people


Grameen's textile project is named Grameen Check. This enterprise is also cashing huge profit by exporting products abroad taking the sympathy of buyers being product from poor people in Bangladesh. But, in reality, 90 per cent of profit accrued from the export of such products directly goes to Mohammed Yunus' pocket while the poor people are only provided the actual production cost and 2-3 percent profit.


Grameen claims to have established a Yogurt producing plant in Bangladesh for nourishing poor children. Yunus should at least have some degree of shame! This company although producing yogurt are selling products at a very high price, which is much beyond the buying capacity of poor classes in Bangladesh. And what about Grameen's project of producing drinking water under joint venture ship with French water company Veolia "to provide clean drinking water for the poor in Bangladesh"? Veolia products shall be in Bangladeshi market for making profit and none of the poor people will ever have the ability of buying this brand at the high price the company would offer.


In fact, Muhammed Yunus is not running any charitable project in Bangladesh. He is continuing to befool international community by pretending to be a savior of poor. In reality, he is a Shylock and a man who knows how to become rich by extracting money from the poor.


Now, let me focus on another important issue. Grameen Bank and most of the enterprises under the same conglomerate are solely controlled by Muhammed Yunus. His own brother Mohammed Jahangir is the chief of conglomerate's media department, who controls Bangladeshi media in exchange of multi-million Taka advertisements. Any newspaper reporting the truth of Grameen Bank's virtually robbery of poor people's money will lose advertisements from this influential group.


Bangladeshi intelligence agencies surely have various record of mockery of Muhammed Yunus. Many of the journalists are even aware of such facts. But, due to high influence of Muhammed Yunus and due to 'advertisement weapon' in his hand, media in Bangladesh shall never publish any such stories.


True investigative journalists in the world, especially with influential Medias like Newsweek, TIME, Washington Post, New York Times, Wall Street Journal, Guardian, Economist, Financial Times, Far Eastern Economic Review, Herald Tribune, SUN, Mirror, Berliner Zeitung, CNN, Fox, CNBC, BBC, VOA, Al Jazeera or even Indian newspapers like Hindustan Times, The Statesman, Times of India etc., need to investigate the true stories of Muhammed Yunus and expose his nasty face to the international community. A master swindler like Yunus should not be anymore allowed to continue his fraudulent activities under the garb of social worker. But, anyone, willing to know the real stories of Yunus or Grameen Bank or this conglomerate should note that any investigation in this regard should go without notifying the Grameen bosses in Dhaka. Because, once they will sense such investigations, they will instruct their agents in the country to shut the mouths of poor people under threats.


Source: Global Politician - True story of Grameen Bank and Yunus

[delilah]

hmm pretty fascinating story....

I have few confusions though.....I know that Dr. Yunus was a full bright scholar and he used to be a professor in chittagong university....isn't that true?And also about the grameen bank thing, Yunus is pretty famous among the people in foreign countries for his theory and his micro credits. Professors here in my school have their students read his books and case study his success and failure. I wonder why they did not come up with these things and stopped him, if those above claims are really that true!

I am sure GP had a monopoly and it still claims that it does have a monopoly in Bangladesh, and sometimes monopoly is better to create more business. It is because of GP's monopoly that we are having so much telecommunication companies and we have foreign people investing in our country. The fact is they are taking out our resource may be, but are not we getting enough anyway? Trust me, a cell phone is not an easy game here in US but its like a toy in Bangladesh and it all started with GP. So we shud give Yunus some credits.

But yea, if you want you can actually find flaw in almost anything and I am sure Yunus has his flaws too, but are those really that hardcore?

[habijabi]

Originally Posted by batman

Yunus claims that he provided mobile phones to poor women in the villages. Yes, he established a cell phone company named Grameen Phone under joint venture ship with Nortel (Norway). Initially people were forced to pay TK. 7 per minute for all out going calls. Yunus run virtual monopoly business by extracting such high charges from the people of Bangladesh. In villages too, his company charged heavy rates from the poor women. But, when a number of private companies like Banglalink, Aktel, Citicell and Warid came in business, now Grameen Phone has to also reduce the rate to only TK. 0.25 per minute to cope with the competition. Now imagine, before entering competition, this company took 25 times more charges from the people

I wont comment on the parts I dont know for sure, but I can tell a thing or two about the part that involved GP.

1. At the beginning, before GP was established, Dr. Yunus went to the famous telecommunication companies of the world with the request to invest money in the telecommunication business in Bangladesh. And guess what, none was interested. Risk factors were too high. Being a third world country where a large percentage of people lives under the poverty line, Bangladesh was too risky a choice for most renowned telecom comapnies. Back then, Citycell was selling handset with connection for almost 1 lac tk. And who could afford that other than rich business men? In a country blessed with corruption and poverty, finding an investment company wasnt a kids play. Its easy to say differently now, but things were not the same back then. Lucky for Bangladeshi people, Telenor was stupid enough to venture which eventually turned out to be a good decision if you think now, but not back then. And who had to convince Telenor? No sir, not me, not you. It was Dr. yunus who did it.

2. Its easier to lower the call rate when a company has 16 million suscribers in its pocket. But how about the situation when the number of subscribers was only 1 million or even less? Establishing network in all 61 districts is costly. Specially when a company like Ericsson is appointed as vendor who costs like hell. How come a million subscriber would provide this installation pay back if the call rates were lower? No company likes to undertake loss. Call rates became lower only when Banglalink came into scenerio. Banglalink had 3 already established telecom company in the market who had full network coverage and a large subscriber base. They had to lower the call rate in order to penetrate the market. This was their survival strategy, not any favour to Bangladeshi people. This eventually became a blessing for us when the others started to lower the rate to stay in competition. The sad part is, Dr. Yunus never had any involvement in this corporate price game nor had he ever any influence to do so. He was only a mere shareholder who would get a percentage (38% probably) of the profit money. Dr. yunus did not run a virtual monopoly business, Telenor in the name of grameenphone did. and because they were one of the firsts. because they had to risk a lot, because they had to invest a lot. Citycell even costed more because they were the very first.

[delilah]

good comment habijabi...

One thing I must say, Bangladeshe a manush hujuge pore e manush ke judge kore fele jekhane age amader positive side guli chinta kora uchit.