Throughout the summer, I have blogged about people who have been associated with BERDO, talked about how this association has managed to alter their lives for the better, sometimes marginally and in most cases substantially. In a few of my early blogs, I have also harped on the fact that effective as NGOs like BERDO may be, they can never (and they do not aspire to) replace the State. They are merely facilitators and State support in all matters is crucial. This blog buttresses that argument further by focusing on the life-stories of two people who have not been fortunate enough to benefit from any GO or NGO programme.

Bashar’s story

In 1994, Bashar Talukdar travelled to Dhaka from Bhola, with his wife and two daughters, in search of a living. The couple had two sons in Dhaka. The daughters were married off and the older son Saddam used to go to a neighbourhood school.

In January 2004, Bashar started to feel a strange rush in his right eye. He slowly started to lose his vision. Routine tasks like pouring tea into glasses became difficult to perform. He would sell the wrong cigarette packet at times. Treatment in Dhaka proved to be expensive. Doctors would charge Tk 200 a visit. The money he had to spend on medicines everyday (sometimes to the tune of Tk 300) meant that his daily expenditure shot up. Bashar could not muster the Tk 5000 that he required for an operation and travelled back to Bhola. At least there the doctor’s fees would be less steep, he imagined. That was the case undoubtedly, but medicines that would cost Tk 25 in Dhaka were sold to him at Tk 200 in Bhola. In short the chemist had chosen to fleece him. Bashar returned to Dhaka. Soon, Saddam who was then studying in Class V was taken off school. He now attends to customers at the stall while Bashar spends most of his time at home. He has registered at Sandhani, an establishment that organises eye-donations. The last time he contacted Sandhani, they told him that there were 2237 people before him on the waiting list.

Bashar at his tea stall with sons Saddam and Younus

The fact that Bashar’s stall lies right outside the gates of BERDO’s head office at Mirpur, matters little. BERDO does not have medical facilities in Mirpur. Nor does BERDO run its Community-Based Rehabilitation or micro-credit programmes there. Sceptics can argue that BERDO should probably make an exception to help Bashar. But where does an organisation draw a line? And if it indeed does decide to help Bashar, what about the blind shopkeeper who has a shop at the street-crossing 200 yards from BERDO? And what about the thousands like him who live remote lives away from the eyes of the State, or those of any NGO for that matter?

Shamima’s story

The intersection (or golchakkar) at Mirpur – 10 is as busy as busy can be. Cycles and rickshaws fight for space with buses and trucks. Pedestrians manoeuvre their way through fruit stalls that have spilled onto the footpaths. The sounds of cars honking horn, vendors selling their wares and beggars making a plea for money rent the air.

Shamima with her begging bowl

Shamima, a fifteen year old girl, spends most of her time at the busy golchakkar, in front of a restaurant. Like all of the beggars there, she too is disabled. Unlike most of them, she is completely immobile. At 8 am in the morning, a man dumps her on the footpath where she begs for money all day. At lunch time, the man collects her ‘earnings’ and goes away. At 9 pm the man carries her with him to his house in Kajipara.

On Eid day, the streets were filled with young girls decked up from head to toe in colourful dresses and sparkling jewellery. Makeshift food stalls that had sprung up for a day were doing brisk business. In the middle of it all, Shamima lay on all fours, waiting for someone to drop a coin or a note into her red begging bowl – aware of the fact that Eid or no Eid, her fortunes would probably remain the same. If Bashar’s was a tough existence, is there any hope at all for Shamima?

The following vlog is the last in a series of five on the new initiative undertaken by BERDO to address the implementation of CRPD articles in Bangladesh through advocacy.

The following vlog is the fourth in a series of five on the new initiative undertaken by BERDO to address the implementation of CRPD articles in Bangladesh through advocacy.

The following vlog is the third in a series of five on the new initiative undertaken by BERDO to address the implementation of CRPD articles in Bangladesh through advocacy.

The following vlog is the second in a series of five on the new initiative undertaken by BERDO to address the implementation of CRPD articles in Bangladesh through advocacy.

The following vlog is the first in a series of five on the new initiative undertaken by BERDO to address the implementation of CRPD articles in Bangladesh through advocacy.

About a third of the visually impaired people that I have talked with during my time at BERDO have reported typhoid as the reason for their blindness. Santosh Kumar Das of Sirajganj falls within this sizeable number. He lost his eyesight at the age of eight. He passed his class 10^th examinations from a village school in 1992 and subsequently enrolled into a college. Santosh failed to complete class 12^th.

Santosh Kumar Das

In 1996, Santosh tried to get himself treated at the Rangpur civil hospital. The operation amounted to nothing. He took this failure in his stride and shifted base to Dhaka. Work, however, was not easy to find and he found himself shift from establishment to establishment like a rudderless ship. For a year he worked at a chalk manufacturing and packaging unit and earned Tk 600 a month. In the evenings, he would sell newspapers at a street intersection. Disenchanted by work at the chalk unit, Santosh left his job. He took a loan from a local money lender and started a betel-nut shop of his own. He now earned Tk 900 a month. Most of it was exhausted in the repayment of the loan. The shop that Santosh was so optimistic about was failing to generate enough profits. He sold it off and worked as a biscuit and chocolate vendor at the Tongi bus station, earning about Tk 30 a day in the process.

The year 2008 represented a turnaround of sorts for Santosh. In June, he met Saidul Huq from BERDO at a disability rights seminar. That same month, he attended training at the Bangladesh Telegraph and Telephone Board (BTTB) to be a telephone operator. Soon after, the placement wing at BERDO got Santosh a job in a bulb manufacturing unit at Gazipur. Santosh finds work at the factory exciting. “I fix circuits and coils and also do the final packaging”, he said. More importantly for him and his family, the job pays him Tk 2700 per month – reasonably well, considering the lowly wages prevalent in Bangladesh. I asked Santosh about the most significant change that his association with BERDO and the placement at the Energy Packing Company had brought into his life. “Certainty”, he promptly replied.

Santosh's daughter

At the end of our conversation, I asked Santosh if I could take his picture. He rummaged into his bag, fished out an old passport-sized photograph and said, “You can use this one. I have it on my disabled card”. “Do you consider yourself lucky to have one?” I said. “Yes I do. Not every disabled person has one”, he said – with a hint of pride and a tinge of sadness.

On the eve of International Literacy Day, Dhaka-based NGOs that work on disability rights addressed a joint press conference at Dhaka Reporters Unity (DRU), under the aegis of Bangladesh Visually Impaired Peoples Society (BVIPS). They called for greater partnership between GOs and NGOs, a friendlier and more flexible curriculum for visually impaired students and most importantly, for children with disabilities to be covered under the education ministry instead of the ministry of social welfare. Md. Saidul Huq, Executive Director of BERDO and Vice-President of BVIPS was present at the meeting.

Popular English daily ‘The Daily Star’ reported:

Call to introduce Braille system in all educational institutions

Speakers at a press conference yesterday urged the government to introduce Braille system in all institutions to ensure education for visually impaired people. As most educational institutions, especially those in rural areas, have no such system the visually impaired children are deprived of education, they added. The press conference was organised by Bangladesh Visually Impaired Peoples Society (VIPS) in cooperation with Sightsavers International Bangladesh at Dhaka Reporters Unity ahead of the International Literacy Day today to draw the attention of the government to Braille system of education for visually impaired students.

The speakers said only four percent of visually impaired children get chance for education when the government is committed to ensure education for all by 2015 as per Dakar summit of 2000. Lamenting on the government’s attitude towards the people with disabilities, VIPS President Golam Mostafa suggested that like all other children, the children with disabilities should be brought under the education ministry instead of the social welfare ministry. In fact, the government itself believes like other people in the society that the people with disability especially the visually impaired are not capable of being established in the society, he said, adding that the government believes that mercy and kindness are enough for them. Executive Director of the Centre for Disability in Development (CDD) AHM Noman Khan said educational materials for the visually impaired children are produced in the country but there is no proper distribution system on behalf of the government. If the education ministry takes a comprehensive plan to provide education to children with disability including the visually impaired children then the problem will be solved to a large extent, he added.

Country Director of Sightsavers International Bangladesh Dr Wahidul Islam said the non-government organisations can make a model for providing education to visually impaired children but it should be the responsibility of the government to implement the model across the country. “Education for visually impaired children is a must if the government wants to ensure education for all,” he said stressing coordination between the ministries of education and social welfare. In a keynote paper, VIPS General Secretary Mosharraff Hossain Majumder put forward some proposals including training for the teachers at primary, secondary and higher secondary level to handle the students with disabilities.

(Source: The Daily Star, Tuesday, 08/09/2009)

A Braille Arithmetic Device

Another daily ‘The News Today’ reported:

Ensuring access of vision impaired to education stressed

Leaders of Bangladesh Visually Impaired Peoples Society (BVIPS) today underscored the need for ensuring greater access of vision impaired people to education for attaining the goal of education for all by 2015, reports BSS. At a press conference at Dhaka Reporters Unity (DRU), Advocate Mosharraf Hossain Majumder, General Secretary of BVIPS, said the country has now a total 1.40 crore disabled people. Out of them, 33 percent are vision impaired having only four percent access to education, he added.

The BVIPS organized the press conference supported by Sightsavers International, a royal commonwealth society for the blind. The press conference was organized marking the International Literacy Day to be observed in Bangladesh today (Tuesday) as elsewhere in the world. Country Director of Sightsavers International Dr Wahidul Islam, Vice-President of BVIPS Saidul Huq, General Secretary of National Forum of Organizations Working with the Disabled (NFOWD) Jowaharul Islam Momen, Executive Director of Centre for Disability and Development (CDD) AHM Noman Khan and Vice- President of BVIPS Nasreen Jahan were also present.

Advocate Mosharraf said there is a double standard in education system as general students have 97 percent access to education while only four percent for vision impaired students.Other speakers said the living standard of vision impaired children, youths and adults is poor as they are deprived of the rights of literacy and basic education. The only way of mainstreaming the disabled people is to ensure their greater access to education by providing them with trained teachers, education materials and Braille books, they said. They expressed their apprehension that the government’s target of ensuring education for all might not be fulfilled by keeping a large segment of the disabled out of quality education. The rate of literacy will be raised to a satisfactory level if the disabled are provided with necessary education support, the speakers hoped.

(Source: The News Today, Tuesday, 08/09/2009)

Wajed Ali Mallick lived a contented life in quaint little Gowachitta in Southern Bangladesh. During the day he used to ferry electrical goods from shop-to-shop and in the evening he used to go back home to his wife and four children. All of that changed on one fateful evening in January 2007 when an errant iron-rod from a rickshaw pierced his right eye in a freak accident, while he was chatting with friends outside a tea-stall. Doctors in Barisal and Dhaka failed to treat his eye. His other eye could not bear the stresses of the heavy dosage of the medicines recommended. He now has 2/6 vision in his left eye. An iron filing still remains lodged in his right eye, and gives him painful, sleepless nights every now and then.

Wajed Ali Mallick at his tea-stall

For two and a half years, Wajed Ali lived on the goodness of his friends and relatives. His disability and exorbitant seed and fertilizer prices meant that his 4 cottahs (1 cottah = 2880 sq. ft.) of land could not be cultivated. Those months of veritable mendicancy still rankle in his mind. He had to marry off his daughter, all of sixteen years, to make sure that the others in the family had enough to eat. The eldest son, who was fourteen years old then and studying in Class VIII in a local school, had to abandon studies to join a tailoring shop as an apprentice. Wajed Ali fathered another child after the mishap. “It was an accident”, said Wajed Ali, half-dejected and half-embarrassed, in response to my question about why he and his wife decided to have a fifth child in the midst of absolute penury.

Four months ago, Wajed Ali took a loan of Tk 5000 from BERDO and opened a tea stall of his own in the market square at Gowachitta. Every day, he opens shop at 6 am and stays put there till 11 pm. Mondays (the day of the weekly market, when traders come from nearby villages) are particularly good for business. Wajed Ali now earns about a tenth of what he used to earn from his business of electrical goods. “It is just about enough to keep my head above water”, he said when asked if the money was enough to sustain a family of six.

His son at the tailoring shop

Wajed Ali does not get a disability stipend, something that all persons with disabilities are entitled to get in Bangladesh by government decree. He has not been able to save enough for the bribe that the clerk at the district office asks for in exchange of including his name in the list of disabled people. Surprisingly, he does not have a health insurance either. “Most insurance accounts in Bangladesh are fiddled with by middlemen”, said Wajed Ali. I had little clue about how insurance companies in Bangladesh operate but nodded in agreement. I realised that when a man’s life is a continuous struggle to gather enough means to live, the very thought of investing in one’s future appears faintly ridiculous, even revolting.

BERDO’s micro-credit programme loans out sums starting from Tk 5000 upto Tk 20000 to disabled individuals and females, at an annual interest rate of 12.5%. BERDO itself takes this money on loan at an interest rate of 4.5% per annum. The remaining amount goes towards transaction costs. Repayment starts from the week after and the loan has to be repaid in 45 instalments. Allowances have been made taking into account personal emergencies and BERDO expects its debtors to return the sum in 52 instalments (a years’ time). A first time debtor is eligible for a loan of Tk 5000.

A debtor at his vegetable shop

People put these amounts to a variety of uses: they start small scale retails shops, tea-joints; sell vegetables from door-to-door; rear chickens and ducks; and buy rickshaws and nachiman gaadis (hand-started, motor-driven carts). For some, these loans present an opportunity to earn more, save and to accumulate assets – a step towards upward mobility. For others, the whole micro-credit cycle is a defensive strategy to cope with penury, a mechanism to ensure that they meet their day-to-day expenses.

A debtor with his nachiman gaadi

Sidr, the cyclone that devastated Southern Bangladesh has pushed repayment rates down from a perfect 100% to 99.7% for disabled individuals and 98.4% for females. A debtor mentioned that a few NGOs had had to shelf their micro-finance initiatives – such was the impact Sidr had on repayment rates. BERDO and its loanees have managed to keep their heads above water. She also revealed that she had paid no instalment for a period of four months, a proposition that BERDO was alright with. Most importantly perhaps, she mentioned that the loan in itself (and the weekly instalments) did not feel like an additional burden in the aftermath of Sidr. And that at no point of time did she rue the fact that she had taken a loan.