বাংলা
By Syed Altefat Hossain
PANCHAGARH, Feb 24, 2023 (BSS) – Until months ago, a roof atop his dilapidated hut was the abode of 48-year-old Shahidul, a landless farmer, while his prime concern was how he could keep it habitable for his six-member family.
“My main concern was to feed my family. But anxiety continued to chase me to keep the house erected as my abode,” Shahidul of Mahanpara village on the outskirts of Panchagarh town told this BSS correspondent.
He was pointing to his now abandoned home, a structure of rusty tin walls and porous corroded tin roof.
He now owns a semi-pucca house with two bedrooms, a kitchen, a toilet and a veranda under Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina’s Ashrayan-2 Prakalpa while the education facility for himself and his three children came hand in hand with the new shelter.
“We were neglected in every sphere of life and my main concern was for a safer abode alongside the everyday meal . . . but now the concerns for the abode are gone,” said Shahidul.
He added his major focuses now are the education and health matters of his family alongside routine livelihood issue.
Under the Ashrayan project, the government also extended its hand to develop a non-formal education centre targeting the school dropout children as well as the adults while a local NGO has been entrusted with the task of running the school as a community training centre in three shifts from morning to late evening.
“Male adults like me go to the school (centre) in the evening shift, the adult women go there in the afternoon while the (school dropout) children get their primary education in the morning shift,” Shahidul said.
This BSS correspondent found some 50 women of different ages in their classroom being managed by three female teachers, who themselves are college students and residents of Ashrayan abodes, and were offering their voluntary services in free time.
“We want to disseminate everything we learnt . . . they (students) are our younger brothers and sisters,” said Alpona Akhtar, a teacher of the centre, while her father Nazimul Islam, 65, is one of the beneficiaries of the project.
The centre provides sanitary pads and sewing machines free of cost to adolescent girls, she added.
Shahidul said the huge Ashrayan complex had enough empty land where he and his neighbours were cultivating vegetables for their daily food intake while several of the allottees were also rearing cattle in the open space.
According to Panchagarh deputy commissioner (DC) Jahurul Islam, Mahanpara was one of the 176 such Ashrayan complexes in the district that leaves none homeless in that northwestern administrative district.
He, however, said the community training centres were so far opened in six complexes to educate the people and provide training to turn them into skilled workforce while “we have by now created a profession based database of the Ashrayan beneficiaries to engage them in different income generating works”.
“The education department has taken a cluster based programme to ensure the education for all 2503 children in the project areas,” said Jahurul, who previously served as the deputy director of Ashrayan Project and director of another wing in the Prime Minister’s Office.
The official said children were being provided bicycles, school bags and badminton to encourage them to the education, adding that special education programme was being carried out to ensure basic literacy for school dropped out children and elderly people through the community centres.
The landless people, who used to languish in shabby huts on lands of others amid hardship, are now enjoying facilities like education, electricity, safe drinking water and healthcare after they found a permanent abode under the government’s Ashrayan-2 Prakalpa.
Jahurul said 1,344 beneficiaries, including 647 males and 697 females, have been imparted different trade based training.
He said the district administration was committed to improve the living standard of the Ashrayan beneficiaries by providing sewing machines, auto vans and domestic animals under the different other programmes.