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Introduction |
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Bangladesh has low levels of
urbanization but a high urban population in absolute terms, being one of the
most densely populated countries in the world. Rapid urbanization in Bangladesh
brings numerous problems and challenges; urban poverty is one important issue,
which is generally overlooked by the development agencies. Dhaka is the fastest
growing mega-city in the world, with an estimated 300,000  to 400,000
new migrants, mostly poor, arriving to the city annually. Its population is
currently around 12 million and is projected to grow to 20 million in 2020,
making it the world?s third largest city. Though Bangladesh has the highest
population density in the world (at 2,600 persons per square mile), the
population density in the slums was roughly 200 times greater, at 531,000
persons per square mile. This figure becomes even more astonishing when one
considers that the slums are dominated by single storey residential structures.
About 80 percent of slums located on public land creating considerable
institutional challenges in terms of basic service provision. Most of the
migrants to the slums of Dhaka came from just 5 (of 64) districts: Barisal,
Faridpur, Comilla, Mymensing, and Rangpur (CUS, 2005, p.12). This migration,
however, also adds tremendous strain on an already crowded city with limited
inhabitable land due to the city?s topography, limited infrastructure, and a
low level of public services.
A census of slums in the Dhaka
Metropolitan Area from 1996 provides a baseline for assessing the growth of
slums there over time. Between 1996 and 2005, the total population living in
the slums of Dhaka more than doubled (from 1.5 to 3.4 million), while the
number of slum communities increased by roughly 70% (from 3,007 to 4,966). The
proportion of the population of Dhaka living in slums increased from 20% to
37%. The proportion of slums on private land appears to have increased, perhaps
due to greater vigilance over public land by the government. For the poorest
quintile, only 9 percent of households have a sewage line, and 27 percent
obtain water through piped supply which depicts the existing extreme condition
of slum dwellers.
Concerning the urban future, the
Center for Urban Studies (CUS) provides rough estimates of the poverty
incidence for the years 2000 and 2010. They give 45% and 40%, respectively, for
the absolute poverty, and 25% and 20% for the extreme poverty. This shows a
decrease in relative terms. However, since the urban population may increase
from 37.3 million to 56.8 million between these dates, the number of poor will
shift from 16.8 to 22.7 million, and the number of extremely poor from 9 to
10.8 millions. Therefore, in the future, the decrease of urban poverty in
relative terms may be associated to an increase in absolute terms (Dubois,
1997).
DSK's operational definition of
'extreme urban poor' refers a group of people living in urban centres, who earn
less than 1 USD per day, left behind poor people, beggars, rickshaw pullers,
push cart drivers, house maid, vegetable vendors, widow, abundone women
(destitute segment of society excluded more or less from other development
projects) who are unable to even make three meals a day. These are people
usually lives in urban slums and squatters, in pavements and survive on the sale
of daily labor. They are usually beyond the scope of any safety net support
available in the country.
Recognizing the multi-dimensional
nature of poverty and DSK's experience, organization arrived at a conclusion
that households in extreme poverty were scatteredly reached through different
types of development instruments in different geographic areas with support
from several development agencies. DSK intends to integrate all these
experiences into an integrated holistic approach to reach a larger number of
extreme poor households through economic empowerment; basic service
provisioning and the formation of CBOs participated especially by women.
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