Caring for Dhaka's floating population
Friday, 16 April 2010
Enayet Rasul Bhuiyan
DHAKA city has a huge and bulging population. A worrisome feature of it is that a big part of this population happen to be shanty dwellers, pavement dwellers or sheer vagabonds. In other words, they form a 'floating population' of sorts, numbering some 4.8 million out of the city's guess estimated 15 million people. This number seems likely to grow further and at a rapid pace as the rate of migration of such people to Dhaka from rural areas suggests.
They live a very poor-quality life and, more significantly, they tend to make the city very unclean or add alarmingly to the steady deterioration of its environment.
Lack of proper sanitation facilities and the overburdened state of the public toilet system even lead to defecation by such people freely in the open spaces that pose a great problem to maintain the city in clean conditions. But that is only one aspect of the environmental consequences of having a burgeoning floating population in the capital city. The floating people are also the reservoirs of many other things that degrade the environment. For example, the underworld engaged in drug trafficking, muggings, robberies and other crimes, find a fertile source of recruits from among these floating people. It is noted that many violent activities in the city are enthusiastically started or participated in by these floating people as a form of indirect ventilation of anger against social and economic injustices they perceive as afflicting them. Thus, this is highly undesirable that such a population gets the opportunity to proliferate undermining grossly the city's livable conditions and its aesthetic appeals.
The first step towards addressing the problem would be one of enumeration. A study may be carried out to ascertain the total number of these people, the rate of their addition to the city's population, what pull factors bring them to Dhaka, how many are temporary residents rotating between their village homes and the city, etc. After knowing fully the facts and the reasons for their destitution, appropriate policies will have to be set in motion.
A major policy response would be decentralisation or building up the current upazillas as local growth centres with various industries, services and other activities taking off extensively there to reduce the temptation of rural people to migrate to Dhaka. This purpose can be best served from first forming a regional policy and implementing it phase by phase after setting the priorities. For example, a big part of the plan can be devoted to first identifying the highest priority areas where economic opportunities are the least and from where people tend to migrate to cities, especially to Dhaka. After having done this, it should be planned how these most backward areas can be helped in the way of generating economic activities or to set up new enterprises there which in turn would create employment and income locally, reducing the desperation to come to cities in the hope of eking out a livelihood.
From agriculture-based projects to grow new crops for export to light industries, all sorts of new enterprises can be encouraged in these areas. The government will have to build basic infrastructures in them to make them usable by private entrepreneurs. The government on its own can also build various enterprises in them and make them available to private firms for rent or sale on favourable terms.
The government can also think of a broader framework of regional development by creating development-promoting zones under a framework of specially 'assisted areas'. Assistance from the government can be extended to private entrepreneurs in these areas for buying lands, building and machineries. Special fiscal incentives can be given to enterprises here in the form of reduction of value added tax (VAT), similar reduction in import duties of raw materials, reduction in the rate of tariff for power and gas, lower corporate tax, etc. Even industries to be set up in these areas can be offered government preferences in the buying of their products when government contracts are awarded. All of these concessions and more, will likely create adequate incentives for potential investors -- to opt out of making their investments in Dhaka and a few other enterprising zones -- to gain from setting up their enterprises in the assisted areas.
Apart from these major policies on the part of the government, other measures should include creating a large number of shelters for the homeless with the costs being jointly paid for by governmental contributions and private charities. NGOs and donor agencies can be tagged along with governmental efforts to this end. If such plans are taken up and implemented sincerely, then over time both the number of floating people and their woes in Dhaka city can be expected to much decline. Here, the important thing would be to adopt plans and implement them on a sustainable basis irrespective of changes in political power and governance.
In sum, any coordinated and big enough move taken to address the phenomenon of floating population in cities -- especially in Dhaka -- can be expected to create notable positive effects by reducing poverty, easing pressures on urban areas and urban living and consequently on the urban environment.
DHAKA city has a huge and bulging population. A worrisome feature of it is that a big part of this population happen to be shanty dwellers, pavement dwellers or sheer vagabonds. In other words, they form a 'floating population' of sorts, numbering some 4.8 million out of the city's guess estimated 15 million people. This number seems likely to grow further and at a rapid pace as the rate of migration of such people to Dhaka from rural areas suggests.
They live a very poor-quality life and, more significantly, they tend to make the city very unclean or add alarmingly to the steady deterioration of its environment.
Lack of proper sanitation facilities and the overburdened state of the public toilet system even lead to defecation by such people freely in the open spaces that pose a great problem to maintain the city in clean conditions. But that is only one aspect of the environmental consequences of having a burgeoning floating population in the capital city. The floating people are also the reservoirs of many other things that degrade the environment. For example, the underworld engaged in drug trafficking, muggings, robberies and other crimes, find a fertile source of recruits from among these floating people. It is noted that many violent activities in the city are enthusiastically started or participated in by these floating people as a form of indirect ventilation of anger against social and economic injustices they perceive as afflicting them. Thus, this is highly undesirable that such a population gets the opportunity to proliferate undermining grossly the city's livable conditions and its aesthetic appeals.
The first step towards addressing the problem would be one of enumeration. A study may be carried out to ascertain the total number of these people, the rate of their addition to the city's population, what pull factors bring them to Dhaka, how many are temporary residents rotating between their village homes and the city, etc. After knowing fully the facts and the reasons for their destitution, appropriate policies will have to be set in motion.
A major policy response would be decentralisation or building up the current upazillas as local growth centres with various industries, services and other activities taking off extensively there to reduce the temptation of rural people to migrate to Dhaka. This purpose can be best served from first forming a regional policy and implementing it phase by phase after setting the priorities. For example, a big part of the plan can be devoted to first identifying the highest priority areas where economic opportunities are the least and from where people tend to migrate to cities, especially to Dhaka. After having done this, it should be planned how these most backward areas can be helped in the way of generating economic activities or to set up new enterprises there which in turn would create employment and income locally, reducing the desperation to come to cities in the hope of eking out a livelihood.
From agriculture-based projects to grow new crops for export to light industries, all sorts of new enterprises can be encouraged in these areas. The government will have to build basic infrastructures in them to make them usable by private entrepreneurs. The government on its own can also build various enterprises in them and make them available to private firms for rent or sale on favourable terms.
The government can also think of a broader framework of regional development by creating development-promoting zones under a framework of specially 'assisted areas'. Assistance from the government can be extended to private entrepreneurs in these areas for buying lands, building and machineries. Special fiscal incentives can be given to enterprises here in the form of reduction of value added tax (VAT), similar reduction in import duties of raw materials, reduction in the rate of tariff for power and gas, lower corporate tax, etc. Even industries to be set up in these areas can be offered government preferences in the buying of their products when government contracts are awarded. All of these concessions and more, will likely create adequate incentives for potential investors -- to opt out of making their investments in Dhaka and a few other enterprising zones -- to gain from setting up their enterprises in the assisted areas.
Apart from these major policies on the part of the government, other measures should include creating a large number of shelters for the homeless with the costs being jointly paid for by governmental contributions and private charities. NGOs and donor agencies can be tagged along with governmental efforts to this end. If such plans are taken up and implemented sincerely, then over time both the number of floating people and their woes in Dhaka city can be expected to much decline. Here, the important thing would be to adopt plans and implement them on a sustainable basis irrespective of changes in political power and governance.
In sum, any coordinated and big enough move taken to address the phenomenon of floating population in cities -- especially in Dhaka -- can be expected to create notable positive effects by reducing poverty, easing pressures on urban areas and urban living and consequently on the urban environment.