Rajshahi slum dwellers taking to FP

FE Team | Published: August 03, 2014 00:00:00 | Updated: November 30, 2026 06:01:00

RAJSHAHI, Aug 2 (BSS): Success of building planned family in slum areas of the metropolis has started becoming visible by dint of multifarious development initiatives taken by different government and non-government organisations.
According to sources concerned, many of the slum dwellers have realised the importance of building planned families with one or two children each for their happiness.
More than 2.5 lakh poor and slum people have come together for eradicating their long-lasting poverty and hunger under a project styled "Urban Partnership for Poverty Reduction Project (UPPRP)" in the city.
Side by side with uplifting their living and livelihood condition through diversified interventions of the project especially income-generation, many of the beneficiaries have become conscious about the family planning.
UPPRP Town Member-Secretary Engineer Nur Islam told BSS that Local Government Engineering Department has been implementing the seven-year project with financial support from UNDP in association with UKaid and UNHabitat.
He said some development organisations concerned like Merry Stops, Urban Primary Healthcare Project and Tilottoma have linkage with the project activities for expediting the family planning activities in the slums.
City Mayor Mosaddique Hossain Bulbul said the family planning activities in the slum areas could be made successful through the project activities. In some slum families, population growth is going beyond control day by day for lack of necessary interventions for the concerned departments.
Experts say it will be difficult to control the population growth unless family planning programmes work well among the slum dwellers.
Prof Mijan Uddin of Sociology Department and also vice-chancellor of Rajshahi University told the news agency that there are various reasons for the prevailing situation in slum areas.
The reasons include, poverty, strong desire to have male children, lack of awareness about excessive population, unavailability of contraceptive among slum dwellers and its high price, lack of counselling about family planning and polygamy.
In the existing socio-economic structure, couples consider male children to be wage earners for their family, he said.
Based on the belief, most of the poor prefer to have male children, ignoring health workers' counselling on family planning, he added.