Caritas Bangladesh and a UK-supported local NGO yesterday signed an agreement to alleviate poverty and create sustainable livelihoods by 2015 for about 10,000 people living in the southeastern Chittagong Hill Tracts.

Benedict Alo D’Rozario, executive director of Caritas Bangladesh, and Colin Risner, chief executive of the United Kingdom-sponsored Shiree signed the agreement at the NGO’s office in Dhaka.

Caritas will receive 290 million taka (US$3.9 million) in funding from the NGO out of a total budget of 320 million taka for the project.

“We’ve chosen extremely poor people as our target group, especially the landless, unemployed and widows. We’ll support them to rely on productive and income-generating livelihood schemes such as cultivating crops, planting fruit saplings and rearing livestock,” said James Gomes, Caritas Chittagong’s regional director.