DHAKA: Live here, there, anywhere a space can be managed in this overpopulated capital city where extremes of poverty and affluence meet in a troublesome paradox.  

The acute housing problem is compelling people to dwell in any place, ignoring high risks and all safety rules. Nimtoli and Begunbari tragedies in close succession came as latest rude reawakening about the danger.  

Experts explain the desperation: The degree of necessity is so high in this city that no warning or cautionary activity of the authority is followed by the commoners. They just follow easy means to meet their needs, be it wrong or right.                                                                                                                                                                                                      

“The tragedies of Nimtoli and Begunbari are the obvious results of this rush,” said a fire-service official, whose brigades of firefighters, nowadays, find it hard to cope with calls for managing disasters.

Some say all this is a nemesis ordained by an offended nature, as the natural features of Dhaka have been mauled and mutilated through indiscriminate building construction.

Whatever might be the reason, it is clear to all that the capital city, Dhaka, one of the prominent and ancient cities of South Asia, has been urbanized without any master plan.

In fact there is no appropriate plan to organize the public works of the city. Lack of integration among the authorities of WASA, City Corporation, TITAS gas, DESA, BTCL, Police, medical management, Roads and Highways is the mother of all the nagging problems of the city-dwellers.

The mismatch has gone to such a pass that the commoners of the city feel, and even believe, that none is there to create an effective function to cope with the smooth functioning of any public service. All are running so fast that there is none to care about the safety and security matters of the residents--in fact, this is more important for the sake of everyone`s safety. The fact remains that solemnly nobody is to patronize this sector—neither the government nor the NGOs nor any social groups.

A huge number of people are coming in the capital everyday from different parts of the country in search of employment or living. The rural migrants think that the road is paved with gold here. Why blame them? All major matters are highly centralized in this capital of the unitary state.        

For this rural-to-urban exodus, each and everyday the population of this ten-million-plus mega-city is booming out its limited accommodation capacity.

Reaching the capital city, after food the second basic need for someone is a better place to sleep or live in. But, following all the difficulties, in the end, they look for a place anywhere in any condition, as soon as possible.

Greedy house-owners grasp the chance--they rent out to the tenants all their unsafe lodges without any hesitation. In doing so, they just brazenly push the helpless people into the jaws of cruel death.  

Most of the slum-dwellers in the city are the victims of river erosion, and finding no other way they step in the city just for the sake of survival.
A very few of them return to their villages.

Considering all the hard facts, experts are noticing with deep concern a severe human crisis in the near future in this 400 years old capital.

According to a reckoning by Dhaka City Corporation at least 1,020,0000 people live in 2 lakh houses at present. An overwhelming majority of them--around 80 percent--are homeless. Every year more 4 lakh people add up to the existing populace.

On the contrary, the experts said, the capital is merely capable of accommodating just 10 lakh people. The population of Dhaka city will grow by 30 lakh within 2015. And then, Dhaka will be the 4th most populated city in the world.

“Moreover, it would become one of the most problematic cities in the world to live in. If the present situation continued, the city would get contaminated within a very short span of time,” observed a professor of Bangladesh University of Engineering and Technology (BUET).  


Director-general of fire service Abu Naim Md. Shahidullah, as such, rang the alarm-bell. “Everybody should become more conscious about the safety aspects of their daily life,” he said.

BDST: 10:14 AM. June 07, 2010.
Corr/SMM/AK