By Syful Islam
DHAKA, Bangladesh (AlertNet) Â? As families displaced by climate change push into Dhaka's already overcrowded slums, shacks are crowding up against the city's railway lines with disastrous results.
Rupa, 3, the granddaughter of a climate migrant from Barishal in southern Bangladesh, recently lost all her fingers on both hands when she fell under a train while living in a hut along the railway lines in Khilgaon, a Dhaka slum.
"People are living in an inhuman situation. They don't have minimal facilities and they are suffering from various medical complications but don't get proper treatment," said Dr. Hans Dieter Langer, a German physician who volunteers for a few weeks at a time in Dhaka's slums.
Cities like Dhaka face being overwhelmed both with new migrants and with demands for services as erosion, intensifying storms and sea level rise slowly swallow homes and farmland in the heavily populated country's southern coastal reaches.
Migrants, after losing their land and homes, are flooding into Dhaka but increasingly struggle to find jobs, schools for their children, adequate food, medical care or even places to build shacks.
The number of beggars in Dhaka has recently risen so high that the government now bans begging in the streets and threatens up to a month in jail for those caught in the practice. The order has had little effect, as new arrivals have few other options to survive.
BEGGAR RANKS SOARING
Around 150 beggars last month were arrested on Dhaka's streets and transported 55 kilometres outside of the city, according to police reports.
Aid organizations attempting to help slum dwellers most in need say the problems they face are daunting.
Sharmin, 5, lost both hands to a train last year. Her mother left her alone at their hut in order to find work and returned to find her maimed. Now the young girl sits along the rail line, eating rice with the stumps of her wrists.
Many others endure chronic health problems.
"These poor people live in a dusty environment. Most of them suffer from bronchitis, pneumonia, malaria, coughs and colds or fever," Langer said.
Dr Brigitte Mutschler, another German doctor providing medical treatment in Khilgaon, said many people work very hard so they have pain in their muscles and joints.
"Babies here always suffer from diarrhea. Those are very much malnourished. We provide a feeding programme for these sick babies, which helps them improve their conditions."
The aid group that the doctors work for, German Doctors for Developing Countries, runs a medical camp staffed by occasional volunteers from Germany, schools in four Dhaka slums and vocational training efforts for the migrants as part of the Glory Friendship Social Welfare network, a local non-profit organization that coordinates private welfare efforts in the slums.
SERVICES OVERSTRETCHED
Residents say the help is vital, not least because government health services are overwhelmed and because they struggle to afford private services.
Amena Begum, 65, who has lived in Dhaka's slums since 1970, said the visiting doctors "are providing good treatment and medicine free of cost. We are happy getting the service that we don't get from government hospitals."
Rashid Mollah, 50, a formerly resident of Barguna district, called life in Dhaka "very tough."
"There is no work other than rickshaw pulling or begging. In our huts there is no electricity, gas or water connection. Life is really miserable here," he said.
Aminul Hoque, the country director of German Doctors for Developing Countries, says he knows first-hand the struggles slum dwellers face, as he grow up in Mohakhali, near Dhaka's Korail slum.
"I know very well how helpless poor people are. I understand that in this economic situation none of the slum children will be able to study without help from others," he said. His program aims "to provide them some basic service."
In Korail slum, where half a million people live crammed into a 100-acre parcel of land, the group provides medical services once a week and runs a school for poor slum children. Both services cost the organization about $6 a month per student or patient, Hoque said.
At the school, Jhumur Akter, 7, the daughter of a climate migrant from Madaripur district, gets free books, tuition-free study and meals twice a week.
Morom Ali, a slightly older student, said his father is a day labourer and can't bear the costs for his son to study in any other school.
"So, we study here, and also get medical care free of cost," he said.
His brother and sister work in garment factories to help his father earn the family's living costs, he said.
Other than health and school services, the doctors' organization provides vocational training in skills like tailoring, sewing and beauty services, aimed at making slum children and youths financially independent.
Syful Islam is a senior reporter with The New Nation newspaper in Dhaka, Bangladesh.
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