Poor people, migrating from outside the capital, sleep in the city at night.
With the country’s lowest temperature recorded is at 7.7 degrees Celsius, the period between September and December is commonly referred to, in local Bangla, as “the
Monga” - a time when food shortages are common, there is a loss of job opportunities in the northwestern districts, and, as a result, the poor go for weeks without adequate sustenance.
The widespread flooding between July and August only serves to intensify the problem, where the poor become even poorer and those who have scrimped and saved, pulling themselves to the margin, are pulled, once again, below the poverty line.
Despite self-sufficiency in food production in the country, the majority of people suffer from food shortages throughout the year, half of them living in hardcore poverty, living with regular hunger. And, then there are those, being in an even worse situation, compelled to eat non-eatable things.
At railway and bus stations and launch-terminals, numerous new faces can be seen. Forced out of their villages by the devastating floods, internal migrants are often excluded from public welfare entitlements. 80 to 90 percent of those affected by the
Monga, are agricultural day labourers who have had little, if any, employment since the onset of the floods.
But, whilst the hardships of
Monga will be endured -- at the cost of more migration to the cities, increased levels of malnutrition, selling productive household assets, and an unsupportable burden of debt…
In the last few days, 45 people succumbed to the cold on the streets of Dhaka.
Munem Wasif
Photographer
DrikNEWS International News Photo Agency 16, Sukrabad, Panthapath, Dhaka- 1207, Bangladesh.
www.driknews.com <http://www.driknews.com>
www.lightstalkers.org/munem_wasif <http://www.lightstalkers.org/munem_wasif>
E-mail: driknews@gmail.com,
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text editor: Lucy Mathieson
