Changemakers Studio June 2001 - page 2: Suraiya Haque / Mean Streets

Introduction • Home • Studio • Library • Contact

Mean Streets

Above: Garments workers commuting to work
in Chittagong's Export Promotion Zone

The export-oriented garments industry has grown rapidly. It employs more than 1.5 million workers and accounts for more than 60 percent of Bangladesh's foreign exchange. As the first modern industry to employ primarily women, it provides hundreds of thousands of women with access to wages.

Ninety percent of garment industry workers are women, and most are recent migrants from rural areas. A growing percentage of garment workers are mothers who work long hours and full work weeks. This makes it impossible for them to care for their youngest children, and to provide them with the necessary nutrition found in breast milk.

Below: children play in Dhaka's Bhashanti slum

Infants in slum communities are especially vulnerable to disease and death, and the infant mortality rate is nearly ten times the national average.

It is impossible for urban poor households to maintain an acceptable level of nutrition with the meager income that they make from various jobs. As a result, 44.2 percent of urban children, in all income groups, suffer from stunting or chronic malnutrition, and the rate is much higher for lower income families. The same pattern also prevails in case of wasting or acute malnutrition.

The health situation of the urban poor is extremely precarious, primarily due to 1) the unhealthy and unsanitary residential environment in which they live; 2) inadequate and poor food intake with resulting malnutrition and lower disease resistance levels, and 3) unhygienic personal health practices due to lack of education and information.

Children of the poor are more vulnerable to disease than the adults, and they suffer from the same types of diseases. About one-third of the population in urban poor communities is afflicted with a disease at any given time. The most prevalent diseases are communicable, arising from poor environmental conditions and personal hygiene. They include scabies, diarrhea, respiratory tract infections, helminthiasis, gastritis, typhus and measles.

Sister caretaker School-age children in city slums suffer from a lack of education: only 18 percent attend school. Admittance to city schools is competitive, and poor children are at a disadvantage. In any case, most are kept at home to help with childcare and chores, or work at exploitative jobs to help increase family income.

For those who can attend school, there are very few formal schools in the slums. Where they exist, the school drop-out rate is high because teachers often treat pupils harshly and are less qualified and less interested in teaching, school facilities and environment are poor, curricula often are irrelevant, children may travel long distances to school, and parents may be unable to help with homework due to illiteracy.

Taslima Begum (left), age 30, has two children and is pregnant again. She was married at the age of 15 and had three miscarriages before she had Ramzan (lower left), her first child. Her third pregnancy is unwanted – she is content with two children, and already finds it extremely difficult to look after them.

Begum's husband is a rickshaw puller who works two to three days per week, and gambles on his off hours. On some days he gives Begum 30 Taka (US$0.52), other days 20 Taka, and on some days nothing. At the time this photo was being taken, Ramzan spotted another child going to school and told his mother, "Ma, someday I will also go to school. I will grow up and wear good clothes."