Archive for the ‘Human Rights’ Category

Database with photographs of beggars in Dhaka city under way

Sunday, July 25th, 2010

The government would soon conduct a survey on beggars in Dhaka city to prepare a database with photographs of people who live on alms.
The ministry of social welfare has meanwhile formulated a guideline for the survey?the first of its kind?to be conducted by some ten NGOs under the guidance of Bangladesh Bureau of Statistics, a senior official told media.
The beggars?? photographs would be taken to avoid duplicity and ensure proper rehabilitation of the down-and-out people in different parts of country, said Gazi Mohammad Nurul Kabir, Director general of the National Foundation for Development of the Disabled Persons.
He said most of the disabled beggars would be relocated at government supported rehabilitation centre while able-bodied one would be provided with opportunities for self-employment, preferably in their own district of origin.

The authorities would divide Dhaka into ten zones and carry out the survey on a single day to prepare the database to ascertain the exact number of beggars and their origins and reasons for begging.

The database is essential for rehabilitation of the beggars whose number is growing at a fast rate throughout the country, specially in capital Dhaka, the NFDDP chief said.
Finance ministry officials said Tk 12.47crore has already been allocated for the project titled ??Beggars Rehabilitation Programme??. Half of the project fund would be spent on survey while rest on rehabilitation.

Although there is no specific data on number of beggars in the capital and others major cities, different government agencies estimate it would be one million countrywide.
The number of beggars in the capital would be around 600,000 who are always found seeking alms at bus stands, railway stations, markets and at traffic signals.

The survey on beggars in Dhaka city would be followed by similar surveys different divisional headquarters, said officials.

Sizing up the human cost

Sunday, July 18th, 2010

What does an economy look like ? and what does it look like when it malfunctions It,s easy enough to say what an economy is, the production of financial value. Expressing that in visual terms is nowhere near as easy. On the one hand, you have the quantitative description of an economy: all that torrent of data from stock exchanges and bureaus of labor statistics and such. On the other, you have the torrent,s roots: offices and factories and sweating brows. At the intersection of description and toil, you have an economy.
Inevitably, Crisis and Opportunity: Documenting the Global Recession comes down on the side of toil. It,s about the human cost of economic forces not just beyond the control of any group of people but also beyond the awareness of any of the people pictured here: Polish miners, inhabitants of a Japanese slum, Bangladeshi laborers, a Florida retiree on a fixed income. The show, which runs through Aug. 8 at the Photographic Resource Center at Boston University, was organized last year by Social Documentary.net, which solicited projects from photographers worldwide. A panel of judges selected a winner and three runners-up. It??s their work that??s at the PRC.

The show consists of 32 photographs. That??s an awfully narrow base to support such an expansive subject, the most important event of the century so far. In fact, the show??s title is misleading. The people we see endure plights that predate the global recession and will long outlast it. Photographs of Timothy Geithner looking perplexed or vacation homes on the Costa del Sol looking uninhabited are about the global recession. Khaled Hasan??s image of a man sifting stones, work that will bring him less than $7 a day, is as timeless as the wind and the rain.

Hasan??s striking black-and-white photographs confront head on the vicissitudes of hard labor in northeastern Bangladesh. Shiho Fukada, whose work is in many ways the most interesting in the show, takes a more oblique approach. She records aspects of life in Kamagaaki, an impoverished section of Osaka. An elderly man stares up at the pachinko machine he??s playing. The way his head??s tilted, he could be staring at heaven. The way the machine??s glow lights the space, he could be staring at hell. In another photo, Fukada offers a tight shot of a dirt-covered hand wrapped around a glass of sake. Most startling of all is the image of a set of storage lockers containing the remains of men who died without kin. The door of each locker has a photograph of the dead man, an effect that??s both touching and unnerving.

Michael McElroy calls his photo essay ??An American Nightmare.??? His approach isn??t so much direct as full frontal. We see Howard Mallinger, a Florida retiree in his 60s, sitting by the bedside of his wife as she receives chemotherapy; carrying a box of donated food; entering his foreclosed condo; weeping on its balcony; in a doctor??s examining room; reciting prayers by his wife??s gravesite; and holding an umbrella in the rain. McElroy??s sympathy for Mallinger isn??t in doubt. But neither is the sense of a beleaguered man being presented as a vehicle for moral instruction. Its good intentions make the workings of that instruction no less disquieting.

??Hades???? is what Tomasz Tomaszewski, the winner of the competition, calls his photo essay about the Polish mining and industrial region of Upper Silesia. The question mark indicates a degree of social complexity the photos bear out. There is considerable hellishness in the sight of someone (in this case, a woman) working a piece of massive excavating machinery in a coal mine called, of all things, ??Peace.??? Yet there is also something magnificent, both technologically and visually. Tomaszewski scants neither the awfulness nor monumentality. In other photographs ? men raising pigeons, for example, or workers tending garden plots on the grounds of the factory where they work ? he gives a sense of a life that??s varied and unexpected, if also limited and little privileged, in a place few of us know. Yet we all do, since Tomaszewski lets us see how much we have in common as fellow human beings.

Hidden shame of ship-breaking industry

Tuesday, July 13th, 2010

Chittagong, Bangladesh (Sources) — Rizwana Hasan is a divisive figure in Bangladesh. Heralded by some as an eco-pioneer, a labor rights campaigner and a “take no prisoners” lawyer, she also is characterized as being on a mission to destroy an industry that employs thousands.

Her works focuses on the effects of the ship-breaking industry in Chittagong. Each year hundreds of massive tankers, ferries and cargo ships from around the world are driven onto the mud flats in Chittagong, and then literally attacked by hundreds of men armed with little more than hammers, cutters and brute-force.

They strip the ships for their scrap metal, salvaging what they can, discarding what they can’t. Rizwana is the executive director of Bangladesh Environmental Lawyers Association (BELA) and has been fighting the industry for decades. BELA has launched numerous legal challenges against the shipyards, which it claims don’t care about the environment or the safety of their employees.

“All these ships contain very hazardous materials like asbestos, PCBs, and they are in-built in the system, so in a country like Bangladesh we do not have technologies to deal with this sort of hazardous substance,” Rizwana Hasan told CNN.

“There is a huge amount of waste oil and water that are eventually released into our coastal environments. In the process our soil gets contaminated, the fishery gets contaminated, the air gets polluted. And we are all inhaling it without knowing the effect of it,” she said.
The issue of worker safety also is a concern.

The casualties of the trade are easy to find — Mohammed Murad worked in ship-breaking for 10 years until a 20-ton slab of metal fell on his leg last year. He says that, with Rizwana’s help, he got some compensation, but the company had originally refused to pay anything after he lost his leg.

“It’s too dangerous, too dangerous. The company doesn’t give us any security,” Murad said. “They tell us to do it quickly, to cut quickly, If you die in the field, no problem, but you have to work quickly.”

There are 78 ship-breaking yards scattered along the Chittagong coast. As we found out when we traveled there, most are hidden from the road, often unmarked at the end of small lanes from the highway. The staff was unwilling to let us film inside or talk to the owners.

Last year, Rizwana says some 160 ships were dismantled in the yards — a process described as ship recycling by the International Maritime Organization, a U.N. agency responsible for maritime safety and preventing pollution from ships. Rizwana calls it an “old boys club” for the industry.

Rizwana grew up in a politically active family and after completing her masters at age 24 she joined BELA, rising to become one of the country’s leading lawyers and the association’s director. In 2009 she was awarded the prestigious Goldman Environmental prize.

Rebuffing accusations from critics, she insists she does not want the ship-breaking industry to shut down. She realizes its importance as a source of employment, money and its potential as a good recycling initiative.

But she is determined that it should operate responsibly and within the law. She says ships containing hazardous material, such as asbestos, need to have these substances removed before they arrive in Bangladesh. She says the country simply doesn’t have the facilities to deal with them. In March 2009 Bangladesh’s Supreme Court ruled that ships entering the country for decommissioning must be “pre-cleaned” in line with The Basel Convention on the Control of Transboundary Movements of Hazardous Wastes and Their Disposal, known more simply as the Basel Convention.

The international treaty was designed to reduce the movements of hazardous waste between nations. Under the treaty, a country must not allow the export of a ship containing hazardous materials if it suspects that the waste will not be properly dealt with by the ship-breaking country.

Dr. Nikos Mikelis from the International Maritime Organization agrees that the ship-breaking industry needs better regulation but says it performs a vital role in Bangladesh, providing valuable jobs.

“It’s a benefit to the country, all that is missing is order and order can brought by suitable regulation and enforcement. I believe it can be done. You don’t close down the industry because it’s not doing correctly now, you adjust it,” Mikelis said.

According to Rizwana, the problem is that in countries like Bangladesh, rules such as the Basel Convention are not always observed and not applied to the ships themselves, only to their cargo. She maintains that ships often are re-registered in “flag of convenience” countries before being sent to Chittagong, with few checks about what hazardous substances are contained within the equipment and superstructure of the vessel.

While Rizwana has won a number of key legal battles, she says many of the shipyards’ bad practices continue, with new yards opening each year. Her opponents at the yards themselves remain acutely angry with her — so much so that she feels it would be unsafe for her to even travel to Chittagong. But Rizwana says simply shining a spotlight on the industry is an achievement in itself.

“We have been able to give a bad name to the industry, and the industry deserves a bad name,” she said.

Extrajudicial killing in Bangladesh:first time officers have been jailed

Sunday, July 11th, 2010

It is the first time officers have been jailed for suspected extrajudicial killing in Bangladesh. Human rights organisations accuse law enforcement agencies of killing at least 200 people in custody since January 2009.
DHAKA,A Bangladesh court jailed 11 policemen on Sunday on suspicion of carrying out an extrajudicial killing two years ago, court officials said, after an outcry from human rights groups.

It was the first time officers were jailed for a suspected extrajudicial killing in Bangladesh after calls from human rights organisations who accuse law enforcement agencies of killing at least 200 people in custody since January 2009.

The policemen surrendered following a summons over the killing which took place in July, 2008.

The officers will be formally charged on July 27, said a court official at Natore, 230 km (144 miles) northwest of the capital Dhaka.

??We are happy that the suspects were sent to jail. We hope to get justice,?? lawyer Zahir Azad told reporters.

The bullet-riddled body of the suspect was found at a remote area near Natore four days after he had been arrested by police.

Police said he had been killed in crossfire during a raid on a gangster hideout, but his family said he was killed in custody.

Hardly a day passes in Bangladesh without somebody being shot and killed in crossfire between criminals and law enforcement officers, newspapers and officials say.

One suspect died in police custody in eastern Brahmanbaria, 100 km (52 miles) from Dhaka, after being arrested on Saturday.

Police said he died of a heart attack, but his family said officers had tortured him to death. -Reuters

Arsenic in Water Kills 1 in 5 in Bangladesh

Thursday, June 24th, 2010

To avoid getting sick from waterborne diseases?chronic diarrhea, hookworm, dysentery, typhoid, cholera?in their monsoon ponds, the people of West Bengal, India, and of Bangladesh have been turning to tube wells. But a different death awaits from well water?cancers of the skin, bladder, and lung, among others. Thankfully, there are solutions.

According to a new study in the medical journal The Lancet, between 33 and 77 million people in Bangladesh have been exposed to arsenic in the drinking water. The World Health Organization calls it the largest mass poisoning in history.

The findings:

??One in five deaths in Bangladesh (population: 125 million) is associated with exposure to water from wells with arsenic concentrations greater than 10 micrograms per liter.
??Arsenic exposure is with increased mortality due to heart disease and other chronic diseases in addition to the more familiar medical consequences of arsenic exposure: skin lesions, cancers of the skin, bladder and lung.
??An increase of nearly 70 percent in all-cause mortality was found among those exposed to the highest concentration of arsenic in water (150 to 864 micrograms/liter).
??Researchers also found a dose-related effect that included increased mortaility even at relatively low levels of exposure, including the Bangladesh safety standard (50 micrograms/liter) and the WHO recommended standard (10 micrograms/liter).
The poisoning is the result of well-intentioned efforts on the part of aid and development agencies in the 1970s when 10 million tube wells were built to combat waterborne diseases. While the new wells reduced exposure to some diseases, they also yielded water contamined with arsenic, which occurs naturally in the region.

The arsenic can be avoided by digging deeper wells?an approach already yielding safer drinking water for roughly 100,000 people in Bangladesh?and by deploying filtering systems

Bangladesh-The World Day Against Child Labor :Prevent risky child labour, ensure child education

Saturday, June 12th, 2010

The International Labor Organization says progress toward eliminating the worst forms of child labor is slowing down. To mark the World Day Against Child Labor, the ILO is urging countries to do more to end this abhorrent practice.
An estimated 158 million children aged 5-14 are engaged in child labour – one in six children in the world. Millions of children are engaged in hazardous situations or conditions, such as working in mines, working with chemicals and pesticides in agriculture or working with dangerous machinery. They are everywhere but invisible, toiling as domestic servants in homes, labouring behind the walls of workshops, hidden from view in plantations.
This year’s World Day Against Child Labor coincides with the World Cup in South Africa. But, for millions of children the beautiful game is just a distant dream.

Bangladesh is observing the 9th World Day Against Child Labour on Saturday through an elaborate programme.

This year’s slogan for the day is ‘Prevent Risky Child Labour, Ensure Child Education’.
Prime minister Sheikh Hasina, on the eve of the day, asked the government institutions, national and international development organisations, labour and owners’ organisations, and the people of the country to be sympathetic to working children.

The government is observing the day through joint initiatives of women and children affairs ministry, primary and mass education ministry, the International Labour Organisation (ILO) and the UNICEF, led by the labour and employment ministry.

In a message on the occasion, Prime minister Sheikh Hasina on Friday asked all government institutions, national and international development organisations, labour and owners’ organisations, and people of the country to be sympathetic towards working children.

Joint secretary of the labour and employment ministry Arun Kanti Aich told a press conference on Friday that the main objective of the government is to stop risky child labour by the year 2016.

According to the national child labour survey of 2003, conducted by Bangladesh Bureau of Statistics, the total number of children engaged in work in Bangladesh is around 7.4 million.

Among them, some 3.2 million are child labourers, of whom more than 1.3 million are engaged in risky jobs.

The survey was conducted to identify the number of child labourer and the fields of their engagement and the working environment.

Child Labour

Allout cooperation by UNICEF for children development, raising literacy rate in Bangladesh

Tuesday, June 8th, 2010

Bangladesh Goverment conciously welcome the support on education sector . UNICEF will provide allout cooperation for the development of children and further raising literacy rate in Bangladesh.

The assurance came when UNICEF Country Representatives Carel De Rooy paid a courtesy call on Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina at her office here this morning.

During the meeting, the UNICEF Representative highly appreciated the present government’s rural development and social safety net programmes to address the issue of extreme poverty in the country.

He also lauded the government’s sincere commitment and efforts for the development of children as well as raising the country’s literacy rate.

In reply, the Prime Minister said her government attaches importance to expansion of education as it is the main tool of poverty alleviation.

She said her previous government from 1996-2001 raised the country’s literacy rate to 65 percent from 45 percent in five years and set a target to achieve cent percent literacy rate by 2006.

But due to the negligence of the successive government this rate dropped after 2001, she added.

Sheikh Hasina said after assuming office this time her government again expedited its sincere efforts to further increase the literacy rate of the country.

The Prime Minister said the present government distributed 19 crore text books among the students up to secondary level free of cost this year and will distribute 23 crore books in future for ensuring education for all.

Listing various efforts for socio economic development of the people, Sheikh Hasina said the number of beneficiaries and amount of money have been increased on old age pension, widow allowance and freedom fighter allowance schemes.

Regarding child and maternal mortality rate, she said steps have already been taken to bring down the rate to a significant level.

Laying emphasis on an uninterrupted democracy for the overall development of a country, Sheikh Hasina said no country can achieve desired development without democracy.

In this context, she referred to her government’s programmes for strengthening democracy. “Due to the absence of democracy in Bangladesh various pro-people development initiatives could not be implemented,” she added.

The Prime Minister said her government is working relentlessly for establishing peace in Bangladesh as well as in South Asian region.

Apart from this, she said her government has also set up employment bank for generation of employment opportunities for the country’s millions of young people so that they could contribute to the economic activities of the country.

Ambassador At-Large M Ziauddin, Principal Secretary to the Prime Minister MA Karim, Secretary to the Prime Minister’s Office Mollah Waheeduzzaman, Press Secretary Abul Kalam Azad and PS to Prime Minister Nazrul Islam Khan were present on the occas

China Wages Rise: World ecomony may take a new l

Tuesday, June 8th, 2010

World ecomony may take a new look with the effect of wages of China .Coastal factories are increasing hourly payments to workers. Local governments are raising Coastal factories are increasing hourly payments to workers. Local governments are raising minimum wage standards. And if China allows its currency, the renminbi, to appreciate against the United States dollar later this year, as many economists are predicting, the relative cost of manufacturing in China will almost certainly rise.

The salaries of factory workers in China are still low compared to those in the United States and Europe: the hourly wage in southern China is only about 75 cents an hour. But economists say wage increases here will eventually ripple through the global economy, driving up the prices of goods as diverse as T-shirts, sneakers, computer servers and smartphones.

??For a long time, China has been the anchor of global disinflation,?? said Dong Tao, an economist at Credit Suisse, referring to how the two-decade-long shift to manufacturing in China helped many global companies lower costs and prices. ??But this may be the beginning of the end of an era.??

The shift was illustrated Sunday, when Foxconn Technology, one of the world??s largest contract electronics manufacturers and the maker of well-known products that include Apple iPhones and Dell computer parts, said that it was planning to double the salaries of many of its 800,000 workers in China, beginning in October. The new monthly average would be 2,000 renminbi ? about $300, at current exchange rates.

The announcement follows a spate of suicides at two Foxconn campuses in southern China and criticism of the company??s labor practices.

Foxconn, based in Taiwan and employing more than 800,000 workers in China, said the salary increases were meant to improve the lives of its workers.

Last week the Japanese automaker Honda said it had agreed to give about 1,900 workers at one of its plants in southern China raises of 24 to 32 percent, in hopes of ending a two-week strike, according to people briefed on the agreement. The new monthly average would be about $300, not counting overtime.

And last Thursday, Beijing announced that it would raise the city??s minimum monthly wage by 20 percent, to 960 renminbi, or about $140. Many other cities are expected to follow suit.

Analysts say the changes result from the growing clout of workers in China??s economy, and are also a response to the soaring food and housing prices that have eroded the spending power of workers from rural provinces. These workers, without factoring in the recent wage increases by some employers, typically earn $200 a month, working six or seven days a week.

But there are other reasons. Analysts say Beijing is supporting wage increases as a way to stimulate domestic consumption and make the country less dependent on low-priced exports. The government hopes the move will force some export-oriented companies to invest in more innovative or higher-value goods.

But Chinese policy makers also favor higher wages because they could help ease a widening income gap between the rich and the poor.

Big manufacturers are moving to raise salaries because they are desperate to attract new workers at a time when many coastal factory cities are struggling with labor shortages.

A Foxconn executive said last week that the turnover rate at its two Shenzhen campuses ? which employ over 400,000 people ? was about 5 percent a month, meaning that as many as 20,000 workers were leaving every month and needed to be replaced.

Marshall W. Meyer, a China specialist at the Wharton School at the University of Pennsylvania, says that demographic changes in China are reducing the supply of young workers entering the labor force and that this is behind some of the wage pressure.

??Demography will do what the Strategic and Economic Dialogue hasn??t: raise the cost of Chinese goods,?? he said, referring to United States-China talks on Chinese currency reform and other economic issues. ??There is no way out.??

Economists say many of the same forces that were at work in 2007 and 2008, when China??s economy was overheating, have returned and even intensified this year.

Local governments have stepped up enforcement of labor and environmental regulations, driving up production costs.

And perhaps most troubling for companies here is the prospect of an appreciating Chinese currency, which would make their exports more expensive overseas.

Beijing has long promised to allow its currency to fluctuate more freely. But when the global financial crisis shuttered many Chinese factories, the government effectively repegged the renminbi to the dollar to protect exporters.

Pietra Rivoli, a professor of international business at Georgetown University and the author of ??The Travels of a T-Shirt in the Global Economy,?? says the effects of rising labor costs will vary by industry, perhaps with lower-valued goods like garments being forced to move to western China or even to Vietnam and Bangladesh.

But she says high-end electronics like smartphones are likely to remain, because they command high profit margins and because China has built a sophisticated infrastructure and quality-control system.

??Labor is such a small piece of the pie for them,?? Professor Rivoli says of the electronics brands. ??The money??s all in the design, the marketing and the complicated distribution system, including retail outlets. Like with Apple, they have those rents in the shopping malls, fancy stores and all those hip people working there. That costs a lot.??

Still, salary increases are expected to affect many stages of the supply chain and force some companies to raise prices. For many exporters who simply produce on contract for global brands, profit margins are already razor-thin, and raising prices could hurt business.

??They??re going to have to find a way to pass this on to the end user,?? says Mr. Tao at Credit Suisse.

Economists say a necessary restructuring is under way, one that should allow the nation??s huge ??floating population?? of migrant workers to better share in the benefits of growth and stimulate domestic consumption.

United States and European Union officials have been pressing China to help improve the global economy by consuming more and reducing the country??s huge trade surpluses.

Rising labor costs here are not the end of cheap production in China, analysts say, but they are likely to help change the country??s manufacturing mix.

??China isn??t going to lose its manufacturing base because it??s got a huge domestic market,?? said Mary Gallagher, director of the Center for Chinese Studies at the University of Michigan. ??But it will move them toward higher-end goods. And that matches the Chinese government??s ambition. They don??t just want to be the workshop of the world. They want to produce high-tech goods.??

Chen Xiaoduan contributed research.

A Simple Demand !!

Wednesday, June 2nd, 2010

Digitalised Bangladesh is now a days is common dream of Bangladeshi. No political question!

If we simplify what is digital Bangladesh ? I answer : A well managed Bangladesh.
To manage well ,we always need to clear about our resources .From my best knowledge i demand a High Powerful Bangladesh Resources Research Centre (BRRC)
To explore the opportunity of the ultimate resources of Bangladesh which grow the potential Bangladesh as a Sucessful contry Bangladesh must should develop a high oppotunity powered Research centre for exploring the resources of Bangladesh , natural resources or human resources or opportunity resources . The Research centre can be co up with the Ministry of planning .

The forgotten trail of destruction in Bangladesh

Sunday, May 23rd, 2010

KHULNA:(sources ) At 72, Bangladeshi honey-hunter Mohsan Gazi has seen plenty of bad storms and hard times, but the stoical septuagenarian says nothing came close to Cyclone Aila that struck in May last year.

A year after the disaster, Gazi??s community of some 500 families still lives in a squalid, makeshift camp on a narrow spit of land surrounded by salt water.

They cannot farm or fish ? the cyclone destroyed their boats ? and have no fresh water.

??I have lived here all my life. There were big storms that I remember in the 1970s and in 1988, but not like this, with this one we lost everything ? our water, our crops, our land, our houses and the embankments,?? Gazi told AFP.

??When the rains come, we will be at the mercy of God,?? he added, referring to the start of the monsoon season in June.

Cyclone Aila slammed into southern Bangladesh on May 26, 2009, and while the initial death toll was low ? less than 300 people were killed, compared to 4,000 by Cyclone Sidr in 2007 ? a huge tidal surge destroyed the network of river embankments where people live in southern Bangladesh.

A year later the embankments have not been rebuilt, condemning 200,000 people like Gazi to lives in limbo ? their land submerged and too salty for crops, their roads washed away and their water sources contaminated.

??The biggest problem is clean water,?? Gazi??s neighbour, Anjana Roy, chimed in.

??There is nowhere near here where we can get water ? ground water here is too salty, we can cook with it but we cannot drink it, the wells have arsenic in and there are also no latrines,?? she added.

??The main road was washed away so even if we could farm we couldn??t get to market,?? she said, pointing dejectedly at the small heap of mud and brick that used to connect her tiny village to nearby Khulner town.

Experts say Aila was more severe than the average storm in cyclone-prone Bangladesh because it struck when the sea levels were high due to spring tides.

??The big difference between Aila and previous cyclones was the level of destruction ? and we can expect more of that in future,?? said climate change expert Moira Feil from environmental think-tank Adelphi Research.

??With increased sea level rise there will be more water volume in general so cyclones will be more likely to have the effects of Aila than previous ones, where local populations were able to deal with the effects,?? said Feil.

Although Bangladesh is frequently described as a country on the front lines of climate change, experts say the fall out from Cyclone Aila has exposed just how ill-prepared the South Asian nation is to handle natural disasters.

Government officials admit that Aila was mishandled from the beginning. It took three months for Bangladesh to declare an emergency and appeal for international assistance.

Rampant local corruption by contractors hired by the Water Development Board ? which is responsible for the rebuilding of embankments ? further delayed the reconstruction, local officials say.

Unlike the response to Cyclone Sidr, the army was not immediately mobilised to help the relief effort and because of the relative lack of publicity and the delayed international appeal for help, donors took time to spring into action.

Amid the delays and inaction, up to 50,000 people from Aila-affected areas have migrated away from the flood-prone region on their own initiative, according to the International Organisation for Migration.

Such migration is a ??logical and legitimate?? coping strategy, said Rabab Fatima, IOM??s regional representative for South Asia, and one which in Bangladesh ??is likely to be of growing importance in the future.??

But Bangladesh??s urban centers are already overloaded, with significant rural-urban drift putting added pressure on infrastructure.

The country is already grappling with the worst utilities crisis in its history and overcrowded cities such as the capital Dhaka face severe energy and water shortages.

??How do you balance between building better houses to withstand storms or training people better to get them out? That is the bottom line,?? said Professor Philip Martin of the University of California.

Climate expert Feil says Bangladesh is set to receive large amounts of money to cope with climate change and mitigate its impact.

??But what are they going to do with the cash flow that is going to come in from the international community? There don??t seem to be a lot of ideas out there at the moment,?? she said