No utility services for home-based workers
Speakers tell seminar
Home-based workers in the city slums face difficulties in earning their livelihood due to shortage of electricity, water and gas supply in their living areas, speakers said at a seminar yesterday.
The workers, mostly women and children, act as supplementary wage earners of their families but 43 per cent of them cannot get enough job orders to work 2-5 hours per day due to the shortages, they added.
The seminar styled 'Favourable Urban Services for the Home-based Workers in Dhaka City: Reality, Challenges and Way Forward' was organised by OSHE Foundation in collaboration of HomeNet South Asia held at BIAM auditorium in the capital.
Organisers defined home-based workers as the people living in low-income areas who work independently at home like handicrafts, broom making, tailoring, and sewing.
"Normally the slums are built on government or low lands. These makeshift houses have no holding numbers and for this reason Dhaka City Corporation can not provide them gas, water and electricity connections," said Engineer Anwar Hossain Patwary, former slum development officer of DCC.
He said that though the slums have no legal power, gas and water supply, the dwellers managed to get those services illegally.
"Some local goons and influential bodies manage them the services from the supply line at a higher price. But these services are not sustainable," he said.
Patwary said some projects run by the City Corporation and NGO's are underway in several slums to solve these problems but they were not proven effective.
A study on home-based workers of urban areas also revealed that most of them earn less than Tk 1000 per year, which is spent on basic survival needs.
Officials of OSHE Foundation and HomeNet South Asia and some workers were present.
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