By Naim-Ul-Karim DHAKA, Oct. 28 (Xinhua) -- At about 11 o'clock that night, it seemed due to clamor, many of rural villagers have been either doing some household work or enjoying television programs when they were usually supposed to be in sound sleep having nothing to do with pitch-dark. Situation has changed rapidly as almost every house in the village -- Chandpur -- under Bangladesh's southeastern Noakhali district, some 158 km away of capital city Dhaka, came under electrification in recent years. With the development in socio-economic life status of the rural people, senior villagers said almost every child of the village now goes to primary school while high school drop-out rates have also slid significantly. They said the remarkable progress in the Bangladesh's remote Chandpur village like many other villages in eastern part of the country took place as thousands of expatriates, at least one from each house who found overseas jobs during the last five-six years, sent home money to their relations. 'My first five children could not finish their primary school level due to poverty. But now my sixth son goes to high school because now I don't need to ask him to work for managing three squares meals a day,' Rowshan Ara Begum told Xinhua while the correspondent very recently visited the village. She said her elder son, who is working a blue collar job in a Middle East country, mainly contributed a lot in changing fate of her 11-member family in recent years which suffered from extreme poverty from generation to generation. Like Rowshan's son, thousands of people, working throughout the world, by sending remittances are contributing to the advancement of their families and villages in entire Noakhali, one of 66 districts in Bangladesh, Karim Ullah, a senior educated village man said. In the last fiscal year (July 2008-June 2009), remittance from more than 5.5 million expatiate Bangladesh, totaled 9.68 billion U. S. dollars, around 22.38 percent higher than that of 2007-08 fiscal year, the Bangladesh Bank (BB) data showed. The bulk of remittances, which contribute to around 11 percent of the GDP for the South Asian country, come from Middle-East countries including the United Arab Emirates, Saudi Arabia and Kuwait, followed by Malaysia, Singapore, South Korea, Italy, Britain and the United States. With development in financial position, villagers said there has been a lot of changes in lifestyle, food habits and dress-up. People in the village now prefer to ride more motorized vehicles instead of rickshaw and traditional horse or cow-drawn vehicles to faster their journey, they said. Apart from this, they said there is now improved water and sanitation system which were major concerns for villagers' health. 'You will find at least one tube well in every home while no house without electricity connection,' a villager Abdur Rahman said. Back in 1988, when the villagers first time saw power to be supplied to a few rich houses of the village, never thought that they could avail one day to have a connective at their own home. ' Its no more a dream. I've television with dish connection in my home because my two sons help me sending money,' said a villager who is taking tea and gossiping with others at a tea stall. Villagers said most of the destitute and land less people in the village have now come out of extreme poverty as there is available jobs in the whole year following the rising number of economic activities carried out by the relations of expatriate Bangladeshis. They said there are almost no mud house now in the village as with the change of financial position of most villagers, who earlier could not even afford to build a Tin house, has constructed building. Villagers said advancement in life-style with use of cutting edge technologies helped in enchanted production of rice and other agricultural products as farmers now get information about application of inputs like fertilizers at the right time by watching television and reaching experts over mobile. 'You have seen that almost every matured people in the village to carry a mobile handset. We get suggestions from agriculture experts via mobile operators' all centers,' Rafiqul Islam Miah, who is engaged with agriculture, said. 'As we've money in hands so we can afford better care of our production through applying required amount of fertilizer and insects and bacterium destroying drugs,' said Miah, who every month like most other villagers receive remittances from his two sons in the United Arab Emirates. As the financial activities increased, many development organizations locally known as NGO which, also works as agents of many private commercial banks for transferring remittances, has opened their branches in the village to distribute micro credit. 'Loan repayment rate so far very good in the village like other villages under many other sub-districts of Noakhali district as the loan recipients' relatives send home money from abroad regularly,' said a NGO worker Shahida Begum. But she expressed her apprehension like relatives of many expatriates as some of the villagers lost their jobs and returned home since the global recession hit many developed countries particularly some Middle Eastern Asian countries, prime destination of Bangladeshi job seekers. Although the country's September this year remittances inflow was 11.80 percent higher over that in the same month a year ago, it is 5.33 percent lower than the previous August month this year, the BB statistics showed. Of total remittances, it showed the South Asian country received 886.39 million U.S dollars in September, a record 937.91 million U.S. dollars in August and 886.39 million U.S. dollars in July this year. According to statistics of the Bangladesh Bureau of Manpower Employment and Training (BMET), overseas jobs for Bangladeshis in the first nine months from January to September plunged nearly 48. 02 percent to 358,171. In 2008, the officials data showed a record of 875,000 Bangladeshis found overseas jobs against 832,000 in 2007. The World Bank last week in a report said the global economic crisis is expected to have a greater impact in the east than the western part of Bangladesh because the eastern part of the country which has a much higher concentration of industry and external remittances than the west. 