Ashrayan-2 offers new life to homeless people

Prime minister Sheikh Hasina has inaugurated Ashrayan-2 project yesterday on a video conference from Ganabhaban. The project provides houses to the people not having house or land, while aiming to eradicate homelessness in Bangladesh. During the inauguration of the world's largest housing project for the homeless people the PM said that not a single person will remain homeless. She distributed pucca houses to some 69,904 landless and homeless families under the project as a gift from the government in the Mujib Borsho. Apart from this, the poor families got ownership papers of two decimal land. All the distributed houses, however, have been constructed on Khas land. We applaud the prime minister for this generous gift to the helpless people.

Nonetheless, under the project the houses have been build at a total cost of Tk 11.68 billion or 1,168 crore. To build each unit of the house, Tk 1.75 lakh has been spent on an average, while each unit has two rooms, a kitchen, a toilet and a veranda. Considering the remaining homeless people, another 100,000 houses are being prepared to be distributed among the poor next month. In addition to the Ashrayan project, the Prime Minister's Office (PMO) will rehabilitate 3,715 homeless families in 743 barracks in 21 districts during the Mujib Borsho.

It is worth mentioning that the Ashrayan project rehabilitated some 320,058 landless and homeless families between 1997 and December 2020, which is a great achievement for the country. The first phase of the project implemented from 1997 to 2010. The second phase ranges from 2010 to 2022, aims to rehabilitate 250,000 more landless, homeless and displaced families. Even though a large number of people have got their permanent resident, another portion of them has not got it yet. Hence, it is expected that the rest of the enlisted needy people will get their own houses in time.





Undoubtedly, offering a house to a homeless family will rekindle their hopes of overcoming poverty and increase confidence. The beneficiaries will be provided with basic facilities, including health, education, and utility services. In addition, fundamental rights will also be ensured for them--which will improve their life standard. Consequently, with having these facilities, they will be able to dreams of a new life in a new way.

Besides the list of 2.93 lakh families, another list of 5.92 lakh families who own land, but do not have houses, or own sub-standard houses, has been prepared as part of the Mujib Borsho initiative. We hope uninterrupted and proper implementation of the plan of this project will change the lives of lakhs of people.