Nagar Daridra Basteebashir Unnayan Sangstha (NDBUS)

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Saturday, August 14, 2010 Shahana Siddiqui Few hours is all that was needed to destroy 2.5 acres of households. THURSDAY, 5 August. The police assure concerned basti bashis of Sattala, Mohakhali that no eviction would happen. The people believe the police officers and go on with their daily activities. The noon prayers end. Riot police suddenly appear, armed and ready to go. Demolition workers from nearby slums accompany the enforcements. A high up government officer takes a microphone and obscurely tells the people that their homes will be demolished. You have 30 minutes to evacuate. The race against time starts.... NOW! Chaos takes over. Two bulldozers appear. Riot police take position to put anyone out of line. Because to protest against the destruction of one's home would be wrong, would be illegal. Oh wait, that's what they are -- illegal. Thousands of people, homes, households are all illegal. They should not have been here to begin with. Go back to where you came from. I...

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Xinhua . United Nations aimed at retarding urban growth and depriving the poor of benefits and services increase poverty and environmental degradation, creating serious long-term problems that could be avoided by enlightened planning, a new United Nations study said Friday. The study, published in the United Nations Friday by the United Nations Population Fund and the International Institute for Environment and Development, examined Brazil, whose urban growth has been considerably more rapid than the countries in Europe and North America. At present, Brazil’s urban centres represent 80 per cent of the country’s population — up from 36 per cent in 1950. But while cities now provide 90 per cent of the country’s wealth, more than a quarter of its urban citizens are below the poverty line, and one in 15 lives in extreme poverty. Rather than addressing social inequalities and planning for urban growth, Brazil had adopted policies that discriminated against urban settlement by poor ...

ONCE again, the poor have had to bear the brunt of what is understood as developmental activity. Sattala slum in Mahakhali which housed about five thousand people has been razed within a matter of hours. The residents who are mostly poor apparel workers and transport workers find themselves in the streets, forced to bivouac under the open sky with their children, the aged and the sick. They had lived in the area for thirty years. It is alleged that not all residents were given time enough to retrieve their belongings and no notice of eviction was served; but this is refuted by the officials concerned. New Age on Friday published a moving report accompanied by a photograph on the sudden plight of the poor people faced with the onslaught of the bulldozer. According to the report, the stated purpose of the demolition drive was to recover land (5 acres and 28 decimals) for construction of the physiotherapy college. The land, it was also stated, belongs to the health directorate. Slum...

Staff Correspondent A demolition squad of the directorate general of health services razed the Sattala slum at Mahakhali to the ground on Thursday ignoring the outcry of the poor, living there for more than three decades. Health Service sources said, the shanties were dismantled to make room for the government to build a physiotherapy college on the five-acre and 28 decimal plot. They said that the government had allocated Tk 50 crore for building the college. A detachment of about 300 police joined a health service team, led by a senior assistant secretary of the health ministry Shafiquzzaman and an executive magistrate, to demolish the slum. Hundreds of slum dwellers blocked the slum entrance, chanting slogans opposing the wholesale eviction without rehabilitation, in a vain effort to foil their eviction, as the demolition squad reached the spot. Ignoring the slum dwellers’ protests, the demolition squad dismantled over 500 shanties until the evening rendering thousan...

Thursday, August 5, 2010Front Page 334 NGOs shut in four months Corruption, misuse of foreign funds, patronisation of militancy alleged Alpha Arzu The government cancelled registration of 334 non-government organisations (NGOs) in the last four months for their involvement in corruption, misuse of foreign funds and patronisation of militancy. The NGO Affairs Bureau (NGOAB) launched a stringent drive to clean up the sector and seized moveable and non-moveable property of these organisations, which were operating in the name of social welfare, charity and volunteerism. The move is significant as NGOAB had cancelled only 56 foreign-funded NGOs in the last two decades since 1990. The bureau cancelled the registration in April, May, June, July and August-2, after a series of probes into violation of rules and laws to run foreign-funded projects in the country. An official at the NGOAB told The Daily Star, "We could not give you details of the cause of cancelling the NGOs' registrat...

Janata Tower to become first software park Staff Correspondent All is set to turn the abandoned and much talked about 11-storey Janata Tower at the capital's Karwan Bazar into the country's first software park. The park will bring the nation's leading software and hardware companies together so that they can share ideas and technologies, and collaborate towards the development of the country's science and technology, sources said. Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina took the decision at the National ICT Taskforce meeting held at her office yesterday. This was the first meeting of the taskforce -- a committee to guide and facilitate the ICT sector of the country -- since Awami League-led alliance assumed office. According to Anir Chowdhury, the policy adviser to the Access to Information (A2I) programme of the Prime Minister's Office, the government had plans to build software parks in Kaliakoir and Mohakhali. But they are stalled because of technical problems and high dens...