Feature: Bangladesh to relocate Bihari camps to ensure Urdu-speaking people's basic rights

It is the sad plight of the Bihari camps in Dhaka with houses separated by just two-feet-wide passageways and shared by people, goats and chickens. The cramped houses, usually less than eight feet squared, host entire families.

The residents are forced to raise their beds to make space for possessions underneath. When it rains, the camp floods and the toilets overflow. As a result, most of the camp dwellers suffer from different kinds of diseases. People are living in the camps virtually without any basic rights though they have been living there for the last 43 years.

The suffering of the camps' residents are sometimes beyond description. The government has been planning to relocate the stranded Pakistanis -- popularly known as Bihari people -- to ease the population from the capital and to ensure better conditions for the Urdu-speaking people crammed into the 33 camps in the capital.

The Bangladesh Disaster Ministry has asked the deputy commissioners of the districts around Dhaka to find suitable land to move the camps' people to.

"The initiative of relocating the Bihari people was taken to ensure the basic facilities are available for these people, not to evict them. We are yet to find suitable land outside Dhaka for moving the Bihari camps," said Amit Kumar Baul, additional secretary of the Disaster Management Ministry.

Relocating Bihari people from the capital is one of the priorities of Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina. She wants to ensure a healthy living situation for the Biharis as they are involved in various productive jobs such as crafting Banarasi and Jamdani sarees. A relocation plan was devised after 10 Biharis were allegedly killed by the followers of local political bigwigs in June last year.

Investigators, however, have not yet made any arrests. At a meeting with Prime Minister Hasina on April 18, representatives of the Biharis told her that they would like to move to new locations but those places should be adjacent to other camps located outside the capital.

"We are very positive about the government's move to relocate us. We just want to live with all the basic rights and basic needs. We have endured 43 years of repression and generations have gone to the gutters because of a lack of basic rights," Shoukat Ali, general secretary of the Stranded Pakistanis General Repatriation Committee, told Xinhua.

Around 300,000 Biharis live in 70 camps in 13 districts in the country. Apart from Dhaka, these camps are located in Narayangani, Khulna, Chittagong, Bogra, Rajshahi, Jessore, Jamalpur, Pabna, Munshiganj, Rangpur, Nilphamari and Gaibandha.

Rashida Banu, a 60-year-old Bihari woman, said, "We have lived our whole lives here. We, the camp people, are like a family now. If we are relocated to a suitable land, we will move. Our only demand is that we should be relocated to a place close to other camps located outside of the capital."

Sahid Ali, a motor mechanic, expressed a different view. "If we are relocated to other places, then what would be our way of earning a living? We the Bihari camp people are technical experts, adept at craft making, as well as cooking. All these professions are based in Dhaka, so how our bread and butter is made should be decided first."

"Relocation would not resolve the current problem. We have to be given basic rights," he added. Endi