The Rupnagar slum in Mirpur on a sprawling 100 acres of government land is a money churning venture of some prominent land grabbers of the locality. Three fires devastated the slum in the last seven months, the last on Wednesday.
The fire on Wednesday burnt for hours and rendered thousands of people homeless. The inferno destroyed hundreds of shanties with the entire life savings of the poor occupants, mostly garment workers, rickshaw pullers, street vendors and domestic help.
During the fire all the able bodied men and women were at their workplaces living their children and the elderly people inside the slum.
Ayesha Begum, a victim, told the Daily Observer on Thursday that she lost everything in the fire but those who collect monthly rent from them are not the losers.
Russel, a garment worker, who lives in the slum with his wife, a three-year old daughter and his mother said, "I was at work in the garment factory near the slum. My supervisor told me to hurry home all of a sudden, saying a fire had
broken out in the slum. I was in a shock. We lost all our belongings but managed to rescue my baby and 60-year old mother from our shanty as the fire raged."
There are many like Russel who lost everything they had in the fire because they could not remove their belonging to safety as they were at work outside the slum.
The victims were low income people living there for the last five to ten years. Someone purposely lit the fire, claimed several slum dwellers after the incident, but they refused to name any one in particular or any vested group.
There are several high-rise buildings surrounding the Rupnagar slum, one of the biggest living quarters of low income groups in the capital, where 2,000 shanties were raised to the ground by the blaze on Wednesday.
Who were the real owners of the slum land?
The National Housing Authority (NHA) claimed that the land belong to the government. Several others claimed that the land was their personnel property. They filed several cases to establish their claim to ownership of the land and all the cases were under trial.
The NHA installed a signboard inside the slum displaying an apartment project for low and lower-middle income groups.
The victims said the signboard was installed in July last year and since then there have been fires that have burnt the slum thrice already. They said that they had never had fire accidents before the government plan, despite being one of the oldest slums in Dhaka.
As many as 2,000 houses were razed to the ground and around 10,000 residents were affected in the fire that broke out in the slum in Mirpur's Rupnagar area of Dhaka.
However, another group claimed that insecure utility services, including gas and electricity, might be the cause of the fire. Illegal gas and electricity connections are rampant in these households.
"The fire service, RAB and police will investigate the incident," Moslema Begum, a fire victim, told this correspondent. Earlier on January 24 and August 16 last year, the slum caught fire. The NHA denies the allegations.
The NHA has planned to implement a housing project for low and lower-middle income groups at Rupnagar after evicting the slum dwellers. The authority has been implementing such a project at Mirpur section 11 also, and in many other districts.
