POOR parents of a newborn child in southern Bangladesh auctioned off their baby to repay a loan from a local micro-credit bank.<\/p>\n
The auction took place in the impoverished hamlet of Farhadabad in Fatikchari sub-district, 290km south of the capital, Dhaka, over the weekend, said the daily, Ittefaq.<\/p>\n
The announcement of the sale attracted more than a dozen bidders, many coming from outside the district.<\/p>\n
The newspaper, quoting local reporters, said the baby was sold at a price of 20,000 taka ($351).<\/p>\n
Chikon Mia and Humaira Khatoon, parents of the baby, said they already had two children who they were barely able to feed.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe do not have enough money to feed the two children. How can I possibly feed a third one?\u201d Ms Khatoon asked.<\/p>\n
The landless family fell into hard times and took out a small loan last year to tide them over an economic crisis. But the farming couple failed to repay the loan in time and plunged into deeper financial problems.<\/p>\n
After the couple’s request to the bank to reschedule the unpaid loan was turned down, they put the baby up for auction.<\/p>\n
Nearly 40 per cent of Bangladesh’s 130 million people live under the United Nation’s designated poverty line.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
POOR parents of a newborn child in southern Bangladesh auctioned off their baby to repay a loan from a local micro-credit bank. The auction took place in the impoverished hamlet of Farhadabad in Fatikchari sub-district, 290km south of the capital, Dhaka, over the weekend, said the daily, Ittefaq. The announcement of the sale attracted more […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_s2mail":"","spay_email":""},"categories":[50,11],"tags":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/bbrace.net\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/212"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/bbrace.net\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/bbrace.net\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bbrace.net\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bbrace.net\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=212"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/bbrace.net\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/212\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/bbrace.net\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=212"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bbrace.net\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=212"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bbrace.net\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=212"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}