Role of Family Development Program in Selected Slums in Dhaka City

Abstract

The objective of this study is to evaluate the Family Development Program (PDP) aiming at improving socioeconomic conditions of slum dwellers. It is an especial type of program under the Urban Social Services (USS) Projects of the Department of Social Services (DSS), Government or Bangladesh. In 1982, the Department of Social Services and UNECEF jointly initiated community-based projects for the urban poor in 14 out of the 43 USS projects in the 4 metropolitan Cities of Dhaka, Chittagong, Khulna and Rajshahi. This new program was expected to provide an integrated package of services and facilities to the slum dwellers, who would be actively involved in the operation of those services. Although much of the UNICEP support ended by I985, the financial assistance provided by UNICEF in the form of revolving funds continued to be utilized for implementing the objectives of FDP in those 14 projects. FDP seeks to involve women from slums in socioeconomic activities in order to misc their standard of living. It may be noted here: "The strategies that are used in implementing FDP are selection of slum areas; identification of the target households; provision of loans for income­generating activities; and arranging other services such as skill training; education in health and sanitation; promoting immunization, literacy and cultural activities. The FOP activities are undertaken through organized women's groups." The FOP conducted a base-line survey to identity the target urban poor households. Households with yearly per capita average income of below Tk. 2350 and between Tk. 2350 (poverty line) and 3400 are categorized as 'extreme poor' and poor respectively. The households having yearly per capita average income more than 3400 are above poverty line. The households in extreme poverty were generally eligible for inclusion in FOP. The USS officers and his/her staff (neighborhood workers) made door to door visits, hold group discussions and encouraged poor women from target households to form their work groups. Each work group held monthly meetings, during which the members learnt about the art of co-operative action. The work groups were generally kept small (consisting of about 20 members or less) to facilitate closer inleraction. The meetings of the work groups enabled members to become aware of their roles and responsibilities in-group activities, and also familiarized the members with plan and procedure of the FDP activities. The neighborhood worker provided advice and guidance, especially during the early stages. Program issues like approval of income-earning schemes, decision of loan disbursement, collection of personal savings and promotion of school enrolment, issues pertaining to vaccinations and immunization, family planning were generally discussed in the monthly meetings. The most important program of the FDP was the promotion of income-earning activities through supervised revolving funds and most or the income earning activities were related to small-trades and businesses which yielded a regular flow of income and helped later on to a great extent to repay the loans. The FOP encouraged its participants to make regular savings. The FOP also encouraged its beneficiaries to send their children to school. and those who were not in a position to take advantage of regular schools were encouraged during their leisure time to attend adult education centers operated by the USS project. The work groups provided a forum to GOs and NGOs to offer education in Health and sanitation, in promotion of family planning and to initiate vaccination campaigns. In order to strengthen the program the City Corporation and Public health Engineering Department provided tube-wells, sanitary latrines and garbage-bins, which were maintained by the members of the work groups. The resources provided by these two bodies were of course inadequate lo deal with enormous problems or slum dwellers. From a paper presented to the BIOS seminar 0n "Urbanization' and Urban Poor", Haque stated that from 1980-82 UNICEF provided Tk. 1.4 million to 1040 slum poor families under 14 USS projects ,and during 1982-86 Tk. 14.00 million to 1600 poor families or slum areas. The recovery of' Ioan with IO percent service charge was 91 percent. According to Haque, "The program performance was found highly satisfactory to the benefit of the target families.2" Although FDP was in operation for n substantial period of time in selected project areas seeking to raise the level of living and standard of life of slum dwellers, no systematic and in-depth investigations were so far been conducted to evaluate the socioeconomic impect of this innovative social development program. This fact has been taken into eonsideration for undertaking this study……………………