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'Government should ensure fundamental rights of every child'

Professor Nazrul Islam, Chairman, Centre for Urban Studies, talks to The Daily Star
SLUM children, who make up a huge chunk of Dhaka's child population, continue to be deprived of almost all basic rights and facilities enjoyed by children of affluent families, said noted urban expert Prof Nazrul Islam.
Proper food, clothing, healthcare, education and accommodation are the five fundamental citizen rights and a must for proper growth of any child. Without these, the tens of thousands of children living in the slums would not be able to flourish their latent talents, which could go on to weaken the nation, he maintained.
“For these reasons, it is not uncommon for slum children to lose their ethical values and become involved in antisocial activities like peddling drugs in an early age,” said the chairman of Centre for Urban Studies (CUS).
The same children might grow up to be criminals, or become involved in other illegal activities, he said, which is tragic as they could become great assets for the country
with education and some guidance.
Prof Nazrul Islam, also the former chairman of University Grants Commission, believes it is essential to give urban slum dwellers an opportunity to lead a better life to ensure a better future for their children.
“This is because the families are usually supposed to provide the children with all the basic facilities, and most slum dwellings cannot give these facilities to their children," he said.
When the families cannot provide that to their children, the responsibility direcdy falls upon the government.
“In fact it is the constitutional responsibility of the Bangladesh government to ensure the fundamental rights of every child.”
However, the government is doing next to nothing when it comes to develop or improve the lives in slums, he said.
According to Prof Nazrul Islam, slum dwellers have been neglected from all forms of urban and social development policies.
Even Detailed Area Plan (DAP), Dhaka's much-hyped master plan, has no mention of slum dwellers even though they make up a huge portion of Dhaka's population.
“During the period of the liberation war, there were plans to divide
Dhaka into separate segments among people from different income groups,” he said.
“The whole Mirpur area was supposed to be allocated for the poorer portion of Dhaka's population. It is Dhaka's largest area and was allocated for who were possibly the largest segment of the population.”
However, the plan was never implemented. And the urban plans that followed later gave no attention to the urban poor.
“Urban plans are supposed to divide the land allocation of the city into different sectors education, health, commercial, parks etc,” he said.
The authorities must first decide what they want to do with the existing division in the social class systems. It needs to be decided that whether these divisions would be kept, enhanced or removed.
For example, Prof Nazrul Islam says, currently we have the upper class, middle class and the lower class in simple terms. Therefore, we need to see that the city has facilities for all three classes.
“Dhaka's master plan
keeps in mind the needs of the upper class and the middle class. It shows where there would be Gulshan, where there would be Baridhara, where would be Purbachal and where Uttara,” he said.
“But where would be the housing for the poor? There is no mention of that in the master plan."
This is an indicator of the negligence towards the urban poor including the slum dwellers and their children.
“The government is supposed to take it upon itself to take care of the children whose families are not able to take care of them,” said Prof Nazrul Islam.
“It usually seeks helps from family members, non-government organisations or foreign organisations to give basic facilities to children.”
However, the little that are being done by either the government or NGOs, are not reaching the slum children the way that are supposed to.
“As a result, we are being deprived of a treasure trove of talents that could have flourished in these children,” he said.