Editorial
Eviction drive must have a humanitarian dimension
Relocate the residents first
Nearly 2,000 illegal shops and shanties at Korail near Gulshan were bulldozed in a drive conducted by Bangladesh Telecommunications Company Limited (BTCL) on Wednesday following a High Court order that had asked the concerned authorities to rid the Gulshan Lake and its adjacent areas of all illegal structures by the end of March. Although the drive falls well within the ambit of law, we cannot help express our worries at the miseries and uncertainties that the evicted people are going to face. In fact, there are two ways of looking at it. One is the legal aspect and the other human aspect.
As far the legal provision goes, the 170-acre land stretch between the Gulshan lake and the Banani T & T pond belongs to BTCL and Rajuk and has been illegally occupied by vested quarters for over the past two decades. During this time, the illegal occupants have put up shops, garages, shanties and rented those for business purposes. Therefore, the drive was necessary to recover government property and save the lake. But we are yet to hear anything about the masterminds who allegedly have turned this huge stretch of land into a hub of illegal activities right under the nose of law enforcers as well as concerned government authorities.
However, in an over-populated country like Bangladesh where urbanization has grown tremendously in the most unplanned way possible, existence of slums is no news. The demolished slum at Korail, which is home to several thousand people, has existed there for nearly two decades. Evicting thousands of people without having had any rehabilitation plan will not only render them homeless but also will create an acute humanitarian crisis. With this abrupt demolition, they will be deprived of basic education and healthcare facilities that they, as a community, used to receive from NGO-based schools and healthcare centres in the slum.
While we accept the High Court directive to protect government properties, especially the shrinking water bodies from encroachers, we urge the government to immediately stop demolition of the slums considering the impending humanitarian crisis. We believe it is also within the government's ambit to protect the fundamental rights of its citizens. Therefore, the already evicted people should be rehabilitated sooner rather than later and the residents of the existing slums which are yet to be demolished should be relocated first, before the rest of the slum is demolished.
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