Sixth 5-Year Development Plan
'End disparities against slum dwellers’
The government should think the socio-economic conditions out in planning urban development strategy of the sixth five-year National Development Plan to address large inequalities between urban slums and rest of the country.
Speakers at a launching ceremony yesterday made the call also saying the disparities between slum dwellers and non-slum dwellers in the cities continue to undesirably increase.
They suggest for adequate investment in infrastructures to develop human capital in the shantytowns for achieving Millennium Development Goal and realise Vision 2021.
Unicef and Centre for Urban Studies (CUS) jointly organised the launching ceremony of a policy paper titled “Understanding urban inequalities in Bangladesh: A prerequisite for achieving Vision 2021'' at a city hotel.
Presenting the paper, Carel de Rooy, representative of Unicef Bangladesh, said people in Bangladesh migrate from rural to urban areas in search of economic opportunities, not in search of basic social services.
Such social services are mostly nonexistent in slums, and when they exist, they are provided mostly through unscrupulous middlemen using exploitative means, he said.
The paper showed that the country is experiencing one of the most rapid urbanisations in Asia with about 41 million people now living in urban areas The slum dwellers make up of an estimated 7 million in 2010, it said.
According to the paper, the conditions in slum areas are much worse than those in most rural areas, even in regard to service delivery-type indicators like secondary education attendance rates and skilled attendance at birth.
The under-five mortality rate in slums is almost double as in the urban areas and almost 50 percent higher than the rural rate, the paper said, adding slums have very high rates of school dropout and repetition and an extremely poor ratio for gender parity in secondary school.
Speaking as chief guest, Bangladesh University Grants Commission Chairman Prof Nazrul Islam said the situation of inequality in Bangladesh is not good; rather it has increased tremendously.
Prof Dr Nurul Islam Nezam, secretary of CUS, and Deqa Ibrahim Musa of Unicef also spoke.
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