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- Bangladesh’s only hilly region: Instagrammable, but also a place where food hardly reaches the table*
Bangladesh’s only hilly region: Instagrammable, but also a place where food hardly reaches the table*
Utterly fascinating, exceedingly beautiful. Lonely Planet describes Chittagong Hill Tracts (CHT) in superlatives, as if enticing its readers to frolic in paradise. But while CHT indeed has its share of nature’s beauty spread in a terrain 12 times larger than Hong Kong, Bangladesh’s only mountainous region sandwiched between India and Myanmar isn’t the promised land.
Behind its Instagrammable waving hills, sinuous ravines, svelte waterfalls flowing like bridal veils, and verdant forests nurturing hairy figs, wild mangoes, wood apples, and endangered Arakan turtles hidden in fallen leaves, are starving indigenous and tribal peoples (ITP) often unmentioned in touristy blogs that hunger for likes and shares.
Already suffering from chronic and widespread food insecurity even before the onslaught of Covid-19, ITPs, especially those in the remotest parts of this 1.3 million-hectare territory, were further pushed to poverty and hunger when the pandemic hit Bangladesh.
Having three square meals a day was already irregular among Chittagong’s ITPs before Covid-19. This turned rare or even entirely unavailable when the virus further exposed and worsened gaps in the government’s food policies and programs.
“A large part of the inhabitants of the remote areas, including swidden (shifting) cultivators, suffer from food shortage in various degrees, whose intensity increases during the rainy season,” noted 11 social organizations of the CHT, including the Movement for the Protection of Forest and Land Rights in the Chittagong Hill Tracts, Chittagong Hill Tracts Women Headmen and Karbaries’ Network, and Maleya Foundation, in a recent statement they sent to the Hasina administration.
“Moreover, the burden of having to transport rice and other items from the market to their homes at the cost of 10 to 30 taka per kilo, is akin to rubbing salt on an open wound,” the groups added.
Rice aid: Absent or insufficient
Meanwhile, in the remote and semi-remote areas of the hill region, there were inhabitants who “have not received government rice aid at all,” the organizations said.
Also, the groups told the government that while 10 kilos of rice per family had been distributed to the greater part of these pandemic-affected communities via Bangladesh’s union councils, “this was, in most cases, just one time.”
“Except for the headquarters areas of the three hill districts and their sub-districts, it was seldom seen that anything more than 15 to 20 kilos of rice were given out. Judged against the daily family need of 2 kilos of rice, the allocation and distribution of rice are extremely insufficient,” they said.
The government has been delivering food aid to the homes of the country’s poorest since Bangladesh was put on lockdown in late March this year.
Bangladesh’s Disaster Management and Relief Ministry said last April that around five million people would receive free food assistance, while the rest would get relief through the government’s open market sales of essential goods at subsidized rates.
Corruption allegations
However, not all assistance is going to those who most needed it, according to the CHT organizations. They claim that portions of the food aid are being eaten away by corruption.
“The transportation of goods in the hill region is costly, whereas the allocations on the transportation of relief are inadequate. Consequently, a part of the relief is sold unlawfully and the rest is distributed by excluding some of the enlisted families,” they said.
“Conversely, none of the enlisted families are excluded, but the quantity of relief decreases from ten kilos to below five kilos,” the groups added.
Besides the alleged corruption, the organizations likewise disclosed that a “significant part of the population” of CHT were “being deprived of the opportunity to receive” Hasina’s special 2,500-taka package (roughly equivalent to US$30) because they lacked national identity cards (NID) and/or cellphone numbers that should be registered in the NIDs.
“Moreover, there are also allegations of discriminatory exclusion from the list concerned,” the organizations said, referring to the government’s list of five million low-income families affected by the pandemic who should receive the cash aid.
Last April, it was reported that dozens of local leaders of the ruling Awami League and local government officials were arrested in Bangladesh for alleged corruption and theft of food items meant for the poor.
This incident prompted Prime Minister Sheik Hasina to issue a statement on the same month, saying she would never tolerate the misuse of relief goods even if those involved in the irregularities were her party mates.
"We're taking proper action and will do so against those whoever are engaged in it, no matter which party they belong to, even if my one,” she said.
Seeing that the problems of poor and marginalized communities remained largely unaddressed by the state, church and civil society leaders last August called on the Hasina administration to uphold the rights of ITPs.
“They do not want big things, just their basic rights as citizens. Our political parties make big promises to them before the election but forget when they are in power. We cannot establish a state of harmony if this continues,” said Holy Cross Father Liton H. Gomes, secretary of the Catholic bishops’ Justice and Peace Commission.
Sustainable solutions to poverty, hunger, land disputes needed
The social organizations in the CHT agree. They said the inhabitants of the remote areas in the hill region were not only being deprived of relief grants. They, too, lack other basic necessities such as electricity, safe drinking water, quality education, and access to healthcare.
“Special measures are therefore necessary to extend these services to these areas and to facilitate sustainable development therein,” the organizations said.
“We also think, that it is not possible to provide adequate relief and attain sustainable development in the middle and long term, unless and until some of the special features and contexts of the region are accounted for,” they added.
Beyond intermittently addressing the food and cash shortages caused by Covid-19, the government should solve the roots of poverty and marginalization being endured by CHT inhabitants to make them less vulnerable to any socio-economic or environmental shocks, according to the organizations.
They said the solutions must include the following:
1) Continuously providing food aid or its equivalent in cash, electricity, primary education, safe drinking water, and basic healthcare and employment to 90,000 internally displaced CHT residents until their permanent rehabilitation
2) Resolving their land-related disputes that should be carried out “on an urgent basis” by the Chittagong Hill Tracts Land Disputes Resolution Commission “to accelerate their rehabilitation in their own homesteads”
3) Providing relief packages, employment opportunities, and cash payments to a large part of the 50,000 CHT residents who were terminated from working in the mills and factories in Dhaka, Chittagong, and other areas. The assistance should be provided not just by the government but also by employers such as the Bangladesh Garment Manufacturers and Exporters Association, Bangladesh Garments Accessories and Packing Manufacturers and Exporters Association and the Federation of Bangladesh Chambers of Commerce and Industries.
*This article is based on a statement from Maleya Foundation, a member of the Global Network for the Right to Food and Nutrition.