A city thriving on black money
Has hotels, apartments and bouts of felony.
No safe space for woman, traveler and worker.
Cheap hostel of city authority could be the answer.
Thousands of people travel across the country for different purposes every day. Part of them reside in the houses of their dear ones and large part of them rent hotel rooms for temporary stay. Stat on number of hotel rooms, be it cheap or luxurious, is not available. Travelers find it difficult to find cheap accommodation in Bangladeshi cities. Tourism corporation, a government entity, operates some hotels that are mostly scattered across tourist hotspots.
So cheap accommodation in Dhaka and mofussil towns is rare and inaccessible to most of the travelers.
A look at Dhaka's hotel accommodations reveals that most of them are meant for well-to-do-of travelers. But the capital city also houses daily wage earners and residents who constitute 80% of Dhaka city dwellers.Many stay here for more than a month to earn money and remit it back home in other parts of Bangladesh. But these people are lacking decent place to stay and food at an affordable price.
The condition for working women is somewhat nightmarish. Only few hostels are available for them. A religious charitable organization came forward to address the matter. However, the initiative is pretty small to cover huge demand of accommodation.
In recent years, a Chinese joint venture however showed the way how to do this kind of service oriented business. Its quality of service is good but it is not targeted towards the vast working class who mostly dwell in slums. Even in the Moghul era rulers built cheap accommodation across the subcontinent for travelers.
Last year back in November and December I did a small survey among the rickshaw pullers in Dhaka. I found that on average they spent 10-40% of their monthly earnings on house rent. Most these money went into wrong hands.
The money in turn contributed to the deterioration of law & order. Most of these slums were set up in public and private properties and lack proper sanitation and basic amenities. In addition, crores of Takas worth of utility bills do not end up in government coffer.
Whatever the reasons for their arrival, the seasonal worker, climate refugee, lone wanderer have right to get decent accommodation, food and amenities.
Unlike other countries, government and private sectors are conspicuously absent in accommodation services. I am not stressing on setting up luxury hotels for foreign tourists who are very rare in this country. I underscore cheap accommodation that an average daily wage earner can afford. Think of a huge hostel that offers common dining, toilet, laundry service and kitchen. And the services it offer are reasonably priced.
If such accommodation were widely available , then people making a brief stopover and seasonal workers might pay much less as rent what they are paying now.
Dhaka's real estate boom,fuelled by undocumented money, has little solution to address this problem. People dominate the business are concerned with optimization of the flat size so that the undocumented money will be legalized quickly. They bother little to invest in this kind of cheap hospitality business. More luxury flat sale means more black money manages to come in legal channel.
Dhaka has become an overcrowded big slum that is invading the surrounding areas. Since the city corporations have the means and authority to set up this kind of settlement they can embark on investing in this kind of hostel-like accommodation in association with private companies. The benefits are multipronged: cash strapped city corporation will get the much needed fund, utility companies will get bills, travelers and seasonal workers will get cheap and safe place to stay and decent meal, government and city corporations will keep a close tab on who enters the city and who gets out by maintaining a database, identifying the target people migrated to the city for social security programs, and hygiene and calm ambiance can be easy to maintain.
The city corporation operated hostel will set precedent for private companies to invest their money in this sector.
Another great advantage of operating such service is that city corporation in collaboration with the police can start services like lost & found. This kind of services are pretty common in metropolitan cities. Unfortunately, this kind of service is not available in this part of the world. In addition, community library, community health campaign could be launched more effectively and efficiently in such hostels.
Apart from city corporations, Bangladesh Internal Water Transport Authority (BIWTA) could also play a role in addressing this problem. BIWTA operates terminal and landing stations across the city. It also possesses and houses launches and vessels that are no longer in operation. These vessels could easily be converted into cheap hotels in the light of public and private partnership.
Both the BIWTA and city corporation can offer the cheap accommodation services to other cities. For instance, Dhaka City corporations may ink deal with other districts whose residents come here in drove in search of informal jobs to set up cheap hostels in those cities. The accommodation facility will be solace to cheap travelers from Dhaka and serve as resource center for district municipal authority.
Since 2010 , Dhaka has fallen into the hands of organized criminal groups. To make it woman friendly, traveler friendly, working class friendly, elected city authorities should be given more authority. City corporations should exercise power to set up cheap accommodation for travelers and workers curbing undesired influence of vested quarter.