Country's urban population will reach 50m by 2015

Presently, the country has an urban population of 35 million of whom about six million are living at over 9000 slums in six divisional cities Dhaka, Chittagong, Khulna, Rajshahi, Sylhet and Barisal, said a study titled 'Slums in Urban Bangladesh: Mapping and Census 2005'.

The Centre for Urban Studies (CUS) in collaboration with National Institute of Population Research and Training (NIPORT) and University of North Carolina, USA conducted the study financed by USAID.

The study was disseminated at a seminar at LGED auditorium in the city yesterday.

In his keynote presentation on the study findings, CUS Chairman Prof Nazrul Islam said all the major urban centres of the country have slums, but these are proliferating fast in Dhaka and Chittagong.

He said six districts Barisal, Comilla, Faridpur, Noakhali, Mymensingh and Chittagong are the origins of 54 percent of slum dwellers with Barisal being the biggest source.

People from Rangpur also migrate to Dhaka, Sylhet and Chittagong, he added.

"In Dhaka, both the number of slum settlements and the size of slum population have doubled during the last nine years from 3007clusters in 1996 to 4966 in 2005 and from 1.5 million slum dwellers to 3.4 millions," Prof Nazrul noted.

He said slums have extremely high density of population with an average density of 831 persons per acre in six cities, the highest 1032 in Chittagong followed by 891 in Dhaka and 272 in Rajshahi.

Such densities are normally eight to 10 times higher than average city population, the study mentioned.

The CUS chairman said because of high density of population, slums occupy comparatively smaller land in each city. Altogether slums occupy 6545 acres of land in six cities constituting four percent of the total land of the cities, but accommodate 35 percent of their population, he added.

Prof Nazrul said slums have very low quality housing with very poor drainage system.

"Most slums, especially in Dhaka and Chittagong, are flooded during monsoons," he added.

"Slum dwellers have access to water either from tap or tubewell, but most of them have to share the sources with many families," revealed the study.

Status of access to sanitary latrines is also very bad while on an average only 25 percent slum dwellers have access to sewerage or septic tanks, it added.

Over 90 percent of the slum dwellers have income below the poverty line, while 40 percent of them have income below the hardcore poverty line, the study said.

"It is however encouraging that nearly 15 percent of the slum households in Dhaka have incomes above the poverty line when some have fairly good income," it added.

Despite their living in poor quality environment, most slum dwellers do not like their settlements to be called slums (Bastees), they rather prefer to call it as 'Mahalla' or 'Abashik Elaka' (residential area), the study noted.

Niport Director General Delwar Hossain said the government should formulate a more comprehensive health policy to improve the health condition of slum dwellers.

Niport Director (Research) Dr Ahmed Al-Sabir, CUS Secretary Dr Nurul Islam Nazem, Prof Golam Mortoza of Khulna University, Qazi Saleh Ahmed, former vice-chancellor of Jahangirnagar University, Mohammad Hasnat of Coalition for Urban Poor, and Abdul Mannan of Bastibashi Unnyan Committee also spoke at the seminar.