Project to rehabilitate slum dwellers on the cards

Says planning minister

23 June 2010, 18:00 PM

Staff Correspondent

The government is considering a project to ensure access to food, education and health security of the slum dwellers, said Planning Minister Air Vice Marshal (Retd) AK Khandker. “The slum dwellers are the most under-privileged section of the society. They have no access to nutritious food, education and health security. The government is mulling over to take project for their rehabilitation,” he said. He was talking to newsmen after launching a Multiple Indicator Cluster Survey (MICS)-2009 at a city hotel yesterday. Bangladesh Bureau of Statistics (BBS) and United Nations Children's Fund (Unicef) jointly conducted the survey to evaluate the living standard of slum dwellers both in urban and rural areas. Addressing the function as the chief guest Khandker said the findings of MICS would help the government implement different projects for welfare of the women and children. He also stressed the need for enhancing the BBS coverage across the country to disseminate accurate information that would help the government implement different projects for poverty alleviation and improving living standard. Speaking as the special guest, State Minister for Women and Children affairs Dr Shirin Sharmin Chowdhury said her ministry has taken an initiative to review the National Children Policy-1994 and National Plan of Action for Children (2005-2010) for protecting children. About the MICS report, Unicef representative in Bangladesh Carel de Rooy said, “There is evidence that mitigating socio-economic inequities is a powerful strategy to accelerate both economic growth and poverty reduction.” “Children who do not have access to basic services, cannot get out of the vicious cycle of poverty, if specific programmes are not put in place to address their basic needs,” he added. The MICS report says that the urban slums have the worst performance regarding women's and children's well-being and access to basic services compared to rural and non-slum urban areas. The proportion of children's enrolment in primary education is 84 percent in urban slum while 79.8 percent in rural areas of Kushtia. Moreover, the highest dropout rate was recorded in slum areas where it is six times higher than the national level. The survey also found a major improvement in birth registration with 53.6 percent of children under five against 9.8 percent in 2006. Some 85.2 percent of population have access to water, which is free from arsenic, revealed the survey. Data of the MICS was collected from 3,00,000 households in 481 upazilas across the country. Shajahan Ali Mollah, director general of BBS; Riti Ibrahim, secretary of Statistics Division of Planning Ministry and Samsul Alam, project director of BBS, also spoke at the function.