Editorial
Eviction of slum dwellers
UN official makes a pertinent point
UN Under-Secretary General Anna Tibaijuka has brought into focus a problem we have dwelt on repeatedly in the past. Her view that eviction of people from slums is no solution and that it is appropriate that those who are compelled to leave their shanties are resettled makes considerable sense. It is of particular importance that Dr. Tibaijuka chose to air her opinions following a visit to the Korail slum in the city's Mahakhali area. The visiting United Nations official speaks for all of us when she suggests that the Korail slum dwellers must be resettled in a designated area if the land they are now inhabiting is to be used for other purposes by the government.
In the present instance, the government's plans of constructing an Information Technology village, under the aegis of the Science and ICT ministry, in Korail have posed a clear threat to the future of the inhabitants of the Korail slum. There is no clear idea of where they will go or whether the authorities have at all any plans of resettling them. Such an attitude on the part of the authorities is regrettable, for the simple reason that those who inhabit the Korail slum have been there for more than three decades. Indeed, it is this whole attitude successive governments have adopted toward slum dwellers that has consistently raised concerns among various levels of society. While it is reasonable to argue that a number of slums have by and large grown up on government and other land and in unauthorized manner, it is true that during the time when these slums were gradually coming up and expanding, the authorities chose to look the other way. That said, there is the other side of the picture. Driven by a sudden desire to evict slum dwellers, the authorities have often turned up with police and bulldozers to remove huts and tenements and force their occupants off the land. Such action was not, of course, followed by any plan or directive of how and where the evicted people, hundreds in number, would be rehabilitated.
The UN official makes a profound point when she notes that the global body does not support arbitrary eviction. That is as it should be. Unless human factors are brought into the matter of doing away with slums, we cannot have a caring society take shape, especially where the poor and the homeless are concerned. Poverty and not the poor ought to be the target of any development programme. Where Korail is concerned, it appears that an overwhelming desire to promote the idea of a digital Bangladesh is being brought in at the expense of those who have always lived a threadbare existence. That is the saddest part of the story.
The authorities should take serious note of Anna Tibaijuka's views. Governance, after all, encompasses the welfare of all classes of citizens. Ignoring those on the fringes, sometimes in callous manner, can prove to be counter-productive.
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