e-News® | The NEWS Company…DHAKA, Oct 18, 2015 : Some ten thousand families, who have been affected or displaced by the adverse impact of climate change, are going to get houses and financial assistances through a special rehabilitation project. Under the scheme, the government will set up second phase of “Cluster Village” (Climate Victim Rehabilitation Project) on “khas” land across the country, which will also be eco-villages.
“Although the project has been launched for all the areas of the country, Rangpur, Rajshahi, Khulna and Barisal divisions will get priority,” Planning Minister A H M Mustafa Kamal told #thenewscompany.
Mentioning making of updated data of district-based landless people and allocable khas land, he said “project areas would be selected following poverty map”. The cluster villages mainly focus on rehabilitation of the rural people stricken and displaced due to natural calamities and river erosion following the curse of climate change. The rehab process for affected people had started during the (1972-1975) rule of Father of the Nation Bangabandhu Sheikh Mujibur Rahman. He had rehabilitated 1470 families in four cluster villages in greater Noakhali region.
However, the pace of setting up of cluster villages over and over again slowed with change of governments, but it got a new boost after Bangabandhu’s daughter Sheikh Hasina took office as the Prime Minister in 1996. On the other hand, the planning minister said the government will also provide onetime Taka 15,000 to each family so they could do small business to be self-sufficient. Each dwelling house in cluster villages will have a plinth area of 300 square feet on reinforced cement concrete (RCC) pillars and a five-ring sanitary latrine for a family. This project will be mainly implemented in areas where government khas land is available. Each cluster village will also have a multipurpose hall.
Moreover, the cluster villages will have sources of safe water, sanitation facility, school, market, medicine shops and paramedics to treat villagers for diseases. In 2009, as part of social security programme, the government took an initiative of rehabilitating 10,650 calamity-hit people. In 1998-2008 period, some 25,385 families were rehabilitated.
Cyclone Sidr battered the country’s coastal belts in 2007, leaving more than one million people homeless in 36 districts. Later, Cyclonic storm Aila, the worst natural disaster, ravaged Bangladesh in 2009 which is also responsible for extensive damage and displacement of more than one million people.