Case Study on a Slum Improvement Project in Dhaka Metropolitan City

The case study on the Slum Improvement Project (SIP) in Dhaka Metropolitan City, by the Local Government Engineering Department (as of 1991), was undertaken to highlight some of the innovative socio-economic programmes implemented for urban slum dwellers, as well as some lessons learned from them. The overall achievement of the SIP is satisfactory, as the model made a breakthrough in providing an integrated package of basic physical, social, and economic infrastructure services to the urban poor. Of all SIP components, the micro-credit programme has been found to be particularly successful and most attractive. Many poor households have increased their incomes using this facility. The SIP has significantly raised levels of health awareness among slum dwellers, resulting in significant reductions in the incidence of numerous diseases. The SIP has empowered poor women through community involvement, particularly through the savings and credit programme, thereby raising the overall status of women in families and communities. Some of the components of the project were barely able to reach the poorest of the poor, who remain virtually outside the reach of SIP credit and savings programmes. The land tenure issue has not yet been comprehensively addressed by the SIP. With physical infrastructure development, the non-physical needs such as human resource development, social mobilization, community organization, and participation, which are all vital for project sustainability, need to be further developed. Although slums have become an inevitable part of urban life and land use, eviction is still a constant threat to the existence of slum dwellers.