Karail slum dwellers fear eviction

Express worry to UN under secretary
The Karail slum dwellers on Monday expressed their worry that they might be evicted from the slum as the government was planning to set up and IT village there.
They expressed the worry to the executive director of UN-HABITAT, Anna Tibaijuka, also the UN under secretary, when she visited the slum at Mohakhali in the Dhaka city.
Karail is the biggest slum in the city with a population of about 1,20,000 people in 24,000 shanties on a land of about 100 acres established over the last 30 years. Of 100 acres of land, 47 acres are owned by the ministry of science and technology, 40 acres are owned by the public works department and the rest is owned by the Bangladesh Telecommunications Company Limited.
Ministry of science and technology’s Bangladesh Computer Council has already proposed to develop an IT village on its 47 acres of land of the Karail slum.
‘The proposal for setting up the IT village has already been sent to the Prime Minister’s Office,’ said Bangladesh Computer Council programmer Golam Sarwar, who accompanied Anna Tibaijuka.
In response to the slum dwellers’ worry, the UN under secretary assured the slum dwellers of solving the problems through negotiation with the government.
‘Wholesale eviction of the slum dwellers can in no way be a solution to the problem,’ she said.
‘The government can develop the IT village at Karail after rehabilitating the slum inhabitants at a new site with government support and compensation or the Karail slum inhabitants and the IT village can share the existing Karail areas through a land-pooling and land-sharing scheme,’ Anna Tibaijuka said.
The UN-HABITAT executive director also underlined the importance of developing other cities of the country so that the people were not compelled to come to the capital for their livelihoods leading to the increase of the slum dwellers.
Dhaka City Corporation’s chief slum development officer Anwar Hossain Patwary, who was also accompanying the UN under secretary, later informed the UN high official that the government would not evict the slum dwellers without ensuring their rehabilitation.
He sought help from the UN-HABITAT for the rehabilitation of the slum dwellers.
The UN under secretary visited the slum to see the progress of a programme of the United Nations Development Programme.
To improve the livelihoods and living conditions of three million urban poor and extremely poor people, especially women and girls, the UNDP and the United Kingdom Department for International Development initiated the 120 million dollar development project called, ‘Urban Partnerships for Poverty Reduction’ in 2008 with local government engineering department of the government and the municipalities and city corporations concerned.
The project continuing till March 2015 will cover 30 towns including the Dhaka City Corporation.

Courtesy of NewAge