Hasina pledges high-rise flats for slum dwellers in Dhaka

Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina has pledged flats in high-rise buildings for slum dwellers in Dhaka.

She says there will be no slum in the capital.

“How can it be that everyone will live in flats and our slum dwellers won’t?” she asked at an event in a Dhaka hotel on Sunday to lay the foundation of Dasherkandi Sewage Treatment Plant at Khilgaon.   

“There will be no slum in the capital. Twenty-storey buildings will be constructed there and the slum dwellers will stay there on daily, weekly and monthly rent,” she said.

Hasina inaugurated a similar project for the slum dwellers in Mirpur last year, under which five 14-storey buildings having 117 flats each are being constructed initially at Mirpur Housing Estate in Section-11 of the area.

Earlier, low-rent flats were built for slum dwellers at Bhashantek, but the flats were allegedly distributed among the rich.

“There will be prepaid meters for power, water connections (in buildings for slum dwellers). They will pay for as much as they use. We need workers like them. So we must look after their standards of living,” the prime minister said.  

The government has plans to extend the work to develop the poor’s standards of living to district, Upazila and union levels in the future, according to Hasina.

“My politics us for these labourers, low-income people,” she said.

She also reiterated the Awami League’s plan to replace box culverts with elevated roads on the canals in Dhaka if the party is elected again.

The government is planning two types of sewage treatment to refine the water of the Buriganga river – one for household waste and the other for industrial waste, Hasina said.

The Dasherkandi Sewage Treatment Plant is part of a ‘megaproject’ of Dhaka WASA to bring the capital’s sewerage system in one pipeline within 2025 with the help of the Chinese government.

The government is planning to set up four more sewage treatment plants – two at Pagla with World Bank help, one at Rayerbazar and the other at Uttara with Asian Development Bank help.

The Dasherkandi plant would be constructed on a 24-hectre piece of land by 2020 with an estimated cost of over Tk 33.77 billion.

The plant is expected to serve 5 million people by refining 500 millin litres sewage a day.

Local Government and Rural Development, and Cooperatives Minister Khandker Mosharraf Hossain chaired the programme. Local Government Secretary Zafar Ahmed Khan, Chinese Ambassador Zhang Zuo and Dhaka WASA Managing Director Taqsem A Khan also spoke at the programme.