What’s the condition of country’s marginal-income group people? What are they eating?
This realisation has to be found in the government that the people are confined in their houses by the orders of the government and the government has taken full responsibility of arranging food and other necessities of life.
That does not mean that all things must be provided by the government. But the government must have the planning for making the necessities available. Issuing orders without preparations for the results is nothing but incompetence and unconscionable.
This is not the time to show pleasure exposing incompetence of the government, which is nothing new. But in life and death crisis why the government cannot show some common sense for preparedness to take care of the people denied the sources of earning livelihood.
What’s the condition of several million rickshaw-pullers of Dhaka and other cities? How long they can survive when lockdown has stopped their earnings? We are sure these questions are not seriously taken. Where are the street vendors? Where are millions of small traders of makeshift footpath shops? Does anybody in the government trying to know what the condition of thousands of transport workers is? The answers of these questions are not so simple.
It will be much easier to understand the actual condition of country’s majority people, if we cite here a recent data of World Bank. It said only 15% of Bangladesh’s population makes more than 500 taka a day. They can meet their daily expenses, send their children to school, and have little ability to face an emergency health crisis.
That means, at present, the rest 85% population is living more miserably.
Most of the villagers depended on remittances from the cities or abroad are now facing extreme situation. People everywhere are out of work, they have no earnings. The rural economy is on the verge of collapse.
The situation has reached to such an extent that the starving workless and poor people looted a truck carrying relief materials (600 bags of 10kg rice and 600 bags of 3kg potatoes) at Jamalpur municipality’s Mukundabari on Sunday last. They alleged that they did not get any relief even after going to several places for food aid.
The garment workers have come out to streets for getting their wages despite the fact that the government has already given funds for them through banks.
There are many other lakhs of people, including journalists, who must also get help from the government. Nobody sees the government worried about the problem or has the competence to deal with the crisis.
The government’s past experience is that the people are so docile that they will accept deaths quietly. Such explanation is for the sycophants and looters. But sensible people’s explosion is coming.
So our advice is pay wages as many owners could not be able to arrange workers’ payments for shutting off their businesses, and distribute food and face masks freely among the poor.
The government was happy with incompetent sycophants in the government. Now take advice from some sensible people and make the incompetent ones in the government unemployed.
