Ershad Kamol
Cleaners in Dhaka complain that many of the NGOs working in their slums are simply ‘doing business’ and are not working to improve their living conditions.
They said that many of the NGOs provide them microcredit simply to make profit and not to help improve their living conditions.
The cleaners, as the sweepers are now officially called, said that some of the small NGOs which run microcredit programmes, with local or foreign funding, charge interests at exorbitant rates, sometimes as high as 40 per cent.
Some of these NGOs also run education, health, and
safe water projects in the slums where Kanpuri and Madrassi cleaners live, they added
The Kanpupris and the Madrassis have been cleaners for generations, unlike the Bangalis, who took to the profession only recently.
‘A foreign NGO that does not operate in Bangladesh anymore had opened a collective savings account for our women at Ganoktuli, but the account holders never received the money they had deposited when this NGO stopped its activities,’ Bangladesh Harijan Oikkya Parisad general secretary Nirmal Chandra Das told New Age.
‘Health and education programmes run by these NGOs don’t help us much, because they are often wound up abruptly without any notice,’ he said.
‘In fact, most of the NGOs, except the big ones, approach us for their own benefits,’ said Harijan Oikya Parishad president Krisna Lal.
He favoured the bigger NGOs who ‘provide us technical support in our negotiations with the government,’ he said.
‘We want the NGOs to provide us vocational training, not loans,’ said Krishna Lal.
He said that the NGOs running programmes for the cleaners are either affiliated with the NGO Affairs Bureau or with the government’s Department of Social Welfare.
The NGO Affairs Bureau does not, said its information officer, keep sector wise information on health and education projects run by NGOs for the cleaners.
‘As each project is multi dimensional, it’s not possible for us to provide specific statistics on funds spent on a specific sector for a particular community’, NGO Affairs Bureau deputy director AKM Moazzem Hossain told New Age.
‘And we don’t have any information about the locally funded NGOs affiliated with the Department of Social Welfare which run such programmes,’ he said.
The Department of Social Welfare also could not give any information on funds spent by NGOS on education, health, sanitation and safe water projects for the cleaners.
Welfare Minister Enamul Hoque Mostafa Shaheed told New Age that the government was keen to work more closely with the NGOs to make their programmes more effective in improving the living conditions of the cleaners.
‘We are holding discussions with the NGOs to find out a better plan for the welfare of the cleaners and other marginal communities,’ he said.
Manusher Jonno Foundation executive director Shaheen Anam told New Age that the foundation provides technical support to the Harijan cleaners in their negotiations with the government for their rights.
She admitted that the NGOs running programmes for the cleaners had some limitations as they were dependent on donor funding for the projects.
‘They cannot continue projects if the donors stop the funding support,’ she said.
Shaheen Anam, however, said that the NGOs should take comprehensive projects instead of sector wise projects.
She also said that the cleaners have to fight for themselves to bring about better living conditions and rights ‘We can only help them go ahead.’
Source: newagebd.com/newspaper1
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