At first it was difficult for the Chinese government to take effective measures, but gradually they came up with a plan to improve the living conditions of these scattered people. The people they are dealing with had no jobs in their hometowns and were forced to migrate to the city for work. So, about 500 public housing multi-storey units were built using strong used materials and hard recycled materials and handed over to these homeless people.

The Chinese government has facilitated access to services to these people, which is run by a voucher system. They have their own educational facilities situated inside the area, where students from various universities and colleges come to visit these slums 5 days a week to teach students in the slums. Other institutions provide skilled mentors to give vocational training and teach labour skills to the people in the slums. The Government pays a substantial amount of money and gives a certificate of achievement to these students and trainers, so that they are encouraged to do this educational volunteer work.

Solar panels are installed to these households to manage power source. The government did not provide any power connection from a direct supply source. The community has a well managed food market and grocery shops and other small businesses. Community guards are made from among their own people to ensure their security and safety. Health and medical surveys are conducted every month to check the medical conditions and health needs of these people. More often it is seen that, various diseases and sickness spread in the communities and the government thoroughly monitors these matters and provide medical services.

Government officials monitor these areas carefully to report to higher level authorities for actions and policies to promote. The thing that interested me the most is that these people are given training about microfinance and micro insurance concepts, and then banks give them loans with small amount of interest, and also give interest to households for savings. Volunteers from both public and private banks visit this area to teach people about business, savings and management concept.

Ultimately what I came to know is that, the area is thriving and the result is 100% successful in program management. There are no middle men or opportunists who can do business, or take advantage of the poor. The government is directly linked to the people. As the government has a strong initiative to restrict illegal migration, the project is aimed at outskirts of mega cities. As China is a socialist country, there is no form of ownership system, everything is owned by the state and the housing is leased to the poor people for 50 years more or less. Gradually if and when the condition of the household is improved, they give tax to the government. And the government spends all their allocated tax money for the slum development.

I believe Bangladesh can follow the Chinese model, as we have plenty of untapped resources which can be utilized and recycled to generate income, employment and bring prosperity to our urban slums. The government can select some government owned lands and resettle the slum dwellers in a planned way engaging the dwellers themselves in making houses, roads, establishing small non-formal industries, innovative recycling plants, etc. Also engaging them in civic activities like road cleaning, maintaining the parks, open spaces and gardening on the road islands, etc. I noticed many road cleaners in China working 24/7 but one can hardly notice them. If someone throws a cigarette filter or any dirt on the road or on the footpath, a cleaner appears immediately and swipes the dirt. I am not sure how many such cleaners are engaged in Beijing but we can easily implement such labour intensive activities in urban areas and achieve two objectives at a time — clean environment and employment for the urban poor.

After witnessing the misery of the slum dwellers of Korail eviction I was thinking if we could use this huge manpower for maintaining the Gulshan area, the environment of the area would have been different. The government or the development agencies could give monthly cash and kind ration or wage for their cleaning or maintenance work instead of giving them onetime big amount of cash support. Each beneficiary could save an amount from their wage. After three years they would have a good amount of savings and then if they wanted to they could go back to rural areas again and invest the money h/she earned. At this stage the government or any development agency could come forward with extra financial support in the name of microfinance or micro insurance. The general peoples’ perception is that the slum dwellers make the city dirty but as I saw in Beijing they can play significant role in keeping the city clean.

Bangladesh can learn from China and other successful countries and think innovatively to utilize the slum resources instead of evicting them. It is the matter of changing the mindset of the planners and authorities. The development agencies partnering with local and international NGOs has already implemented unique thoughts.

Shiree, the economic empowerment of the poorest has made a significant revolution among the slum dwellers in Bangladesh, the UKAid/DFID funded project Shiree, partners with DSK has been working for the last 20 years with slum dwellers in Dhaka and Chittagong to improve the living standards of the extreme poor. The hard work results women being supported through accumulation of physical and financial capital. Awareness training in human rights, social entitlements. Training technical skills and business capabilities and strengthening of CBOs for protection and management of common assets and services.

Government administrative structures need to be revolutionised in engaging and changing business process for the urban local government institutions. I believe we do not need much money but just change our outlook, attitude and traditional thinking. We should come out of the box and think and try differently, and grasp challenges to implement new innovative projects.

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Shah Jawad Shamir is an analyst working at Shiree.

Photo: Reuters

The South-West coastal region of Bangladesh is unique for its environmental characteristics. It is vulnerable to natural and climate change-related disasters such as floods, cyclones, tornadoes, tidal surges, storm surges, river bank and coastal erosion.
Cyclone Sidr struck the coastline of Bangladesh in 2007 and Cyclone Aila hit the region in 2009 with 13 ft high waters, breaking river embankments and dykes, washing away the lives and livelihoods of poor people.  Extreme poor people suffered the most.
Since 2009, Save the Children UK (SCUK) has been implementing a Household Economic and Food Security (HEFS) project in six upazilas of two coastal districts Khulna and Bagerhat, with funding from the Economic Empowerment of the Poorest programme. The project aims to graduate 70% of its 15,000 beneficiary households from extreme poverty by strengthening their income sources through a variety of interventions.

The Economic Empowerment of the Poorest /shiree programme is a partnership between the Governments of UK and Bangladesh (RDCD Ministry) which aims to lift 1 million people out of extreme poverty by 2015.  Shiree promotes research among its partner NGOs.  One shiree-SCUK research recently completed explored the vulnerabilities of extreme poor communities in the South.

The findings reveal that tidal surges made the extreme poor more vulnerable by destroying or damaging the few assets they owned. The most immediate and visible impact of the tidal surge was the damage to community infrastructure, household equipment (housing, poultry shed etc.) sanitary and water bodies/tube-wells, production assets, poultry and livestock, natural assets (water bodies). People’s human assets (health, skills and children’s education) were also severely affected with short and long-term implications.  We also found that the climate-related disasters affected social relations within the community.  For instance, some women were forced to work despite social norms which prohibit women’s work outside the home.

It was also found that vulnerabilities vary among individuals and households according to their capacity to prevent, mitigate or cope with disasters. Therefore retaining assets and preventing damage depends on the household’s ability to accumulate savings and preservable assets. Alternative income generation from diversified sources (boating, fishing, seasonal migration) was also a powerful coping and recovery strategy among the extreme poor households.

Floods affect the entire community by damaging markets.  This affects the extreme poor in almost every way: assets sold lose their value as everyone tries to sell, credit becomes dear as everyone needs to borrow, food costs skyrocket as demand for food rises and food stocks become damaged, employment dries up in the short term as farms fail and wages for what little employment is available falls, health and working capacity gets worse as pneumonia and other diseases hit, relations of support disintegrate as friends and relatives become poor and vulnerable too. Indeed the astute businessmen are able to profit at the expense of the poor at such times.
Institutional support (through the HEFS project, government safety nets and other NGO support) provided opportunities to rebuild livelihoods. It was found that 75% of sample respondents recovered their lost assets only because they had institutional support from HEFS projects and they benefited from links made by the latter to access other social safety net programmes.

The data indicates that those households who did not have sufficient human capital, especially single female headed households, to engage in income generating work, were unable to work for the safety net programmes and were left poorer than ever.

Data also revealed that most of the links with government safety nets and with local NGO schemes (e.g. the cash for work scheme, children’s education stipend and relief) were implemented only after the tidal surge. This is an important lesson for future asset based strategies.  Links to safety nets and NGOs should be made at the same time as asset interventions in an attempt to build ex-ante resilience.

From this research we learnt some important lessons.  Those extremely poor families with moveable assets, savings and diversified income generating sources, were more likely able to cope with the disaster. Those linked to safety nets were also less vulnerable. The link ups with these programmes should happen earlier, rather than after disaster strikes, and furthermore, the government should consider developing safety net packages suitable for those unable to physically work, such as the elderly, the disabled, and many women-headed households. Finally, to increase the resilience of the extreme poor, there is a need to develop more long term, ex-ante interventions (capacity to adapt and respond to disaster) to protect the extreme poor peoples’ asset base and livelihoods and to build long term ability to cope with climate change.

– Researched by Prokriti Naukrek

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Shah Jawad Shamir is an analyst working at Shiree.