City facelift for Cricket World Cup
With the capital city getting a facelift on the eve of World Cup Cricket the floating population were dislodged from their make shift shanties, mostly on the roadsides.
The ultra poor numbering about 30,000 suddenly woke up to the stark reality of losing the last shelter. They have just nowhere to go with their families.
Evicted from a sidewalk near Gulistan by the police, 45-year old Rahmat Ali, his wife and four-year old son relocated themselves again out in the open at Suhrawardy Udyan.
Like them, many others had to leave their roadside shanties.
The dislocation cost their livelihood also.
The authorities started removing the roadside shanties for the facelift of the city ahead of the World Cup Cricket to be held from February 17 to April 2.
‘I can no more support my family as my earnings dropped since eviction from Gulistan,’ said Rahmat who had taken shelter there coming all the way from Lalmonirhat.
Getting no regular job, he earned for his family by doing whatever the shopkeepers around asked him to do.
Now it’s a different story. He often gets no work at all for days together.
Approximately 30,000 floating people live in the city, according to Dhaka City Corporation social welfare department.
The authorities undertook the facelift around the venues and improvement of city roads and other infrastructure particularly around Sher-e-Bangla National Cricket Stadium at Mirpur and Bangabandhu National Stadium at an estimated cost of Tk 55 crore.
The DCC has been implementing the project with support from Army Engineering Corps.
DCC officials said that 27 roads, their footpaths and the adjacent drains under repair would get a fresh look before the cricket tournament kicks off.
The police evicted tea vendor Bopu Sheikh from the family’s shelter by the Haji Road at Mirpur about a month back.
He said that after the police evicted his family and other shanty dwellers from Farmgate again more recently he and his family took shelter at Central Shaheed Minar.
All Bopu could gather from others was that foreigners were due to play ‘ball’ in Dhaka, the reason for their plight.
That’s the reason, he thinks, the authorities were busy giving facelifts to the two stadiums in the capital and improving the roads leading to them.
But it costs the daily earnings of so many vendors like him, he said.
He said that his earnings dropped to almost a half. He said it became quite difficult for his family to pull on.
Lieutenant Colonel MA Mohy, additional director of the city beautification project, told reporters at a news conference at the Army Camp near Hotel Sonargaon that said that approximately 50,000 square feet of government land was recovered from the illegal possession during the drive.
He, however, could not say how many people were evicted or lost their livelihood in the process.
