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Improving environment through partnership

ZAM KHAIRUZZAMAN, back from Mymensingh
Mymensingh is a secondary city in Bangladesh. It grows in a haphazard manner, while slums sprawl over a large area polluting its environment. So, the city needs to improve its atmosphere.
Improving the atmosphere of dirty slums is not an easy task. But Mymensingh Pourasabha (municipality) and Care Bangladesh, an international non-governmental organisation (NGO) made it possible.
Kalibari-Gudara Ghat slum beside the Brahmaputra River under Ward number 9 of the municipality has become a shinning example of such partnership. The partnership helped attain remarkable success in improving the environment and also in providing basic amenities including healthcare facilities to poor slum dwellers.
This is why the Integrated Food Security Programme (IFSP), an innovative scheme of Care Bangladesh is getting popular here.
Strategic objectives of IFSP is to promote and protect household resources and assets, to promote health, hygiene and nutritional practices of vulnerable groups and promote effective and sustainable institutional support system. Supporting Household activities for Hygiene, Assets and Revenue (SHAHAR) is a component of IFSP.
The slum dwellers formed a committee named Community Resource Management Committee (CRMC) consisting of 17 members of various professions including three females to transmit people's demand to the municipality. SHAHAR helped CRMC to implement development initiatives. Abdul Quddus, president of CRMC told a group of visiting journalists that about one year ago life was very miserable for 1,981 people. They lived in sub-human condition. Because of intervention of Care-Bangladesh atmosphere of the slum improved a lot. Jahanara Begum, secretary of CRMC informed newsmen that the CRMC members also motivated slum
people to improve health. Previously they had no access to pure drinking water. Care installed three Tara pumps and helped solve crisis of drinking water. Not only that Care personnel helped them in treatment of usual physical discomforts like headache, fever, cough, diarrhoea along with national programmes like immunisation. Besides, family planning, reproductive health service, finding polio and AIDS cases, Care staffers help them to regain health of malnourished children and increase enrolment of girls and boys in school and madrassah, Jahanara told the newsmen.
Md Asad Uddin Khan, Assistant Project Officer, Urban Team, IFSP, Mymensingh Region informed the visiting journalists that in the last fiscal his organisation spent Tk 27,67,229 for development of the slum. Care constructed 655-metre pathway, 259-metre drain, eight latrine complex, 24 tubewell platforms, one box culvert ad one cross drain. According to him there are about 492 households here. For 20-25 years the slum dwellers live on this khas land beside the river. The inhabitants are engaged in different occupations. There are rickshaw/van pullers, day labourers, masons, petty businessmen street vendors, domestic helps and beggars. Their monthly income varies from Tk 1,000 to 3,000.
While briefing the journalists about the programme, Arifa S Sharmin, Manager, External Relations of Care Bangladesh informed them that her organisation extended the required financial and technical support and Mymensingh Pourasava implemented the project. "We seek a world of hope, tolerance, and social justice, where poverty has been overcome and people live in dignity and security," she asserted.