Working people in Bangladesh usually form a housing society for better living in an urban area. Financial limitations of this middle-class group force them to build a reasonably self-planned housing complex, adjoining a narrow road or street, which is often not safe,  and can also pose a threat to public health.

The increasing number of young upwardly mobile people in Bangladesh has led to the need for housing complexes. Being accustomed to modern amenities and social interaction with the workplace community, people feel the need to form such a housing society. There are two types of formations: one is buying an apartment in one building, and secondly buying a plot in a housing area and building individually/collectively resident apartments. The group usually consists of similar working-class people, who are acquainted with each other because of their jobs; similar income earning people but not necessarily from the same area of the country, and very rarely family members are included. 

Religious identification also matters to form the group. The prime objective of the housing society is to live in one’s own housing in the urban area during and after their retirement. People working in one organization for long select places near to their offices for building such housing societies, while people having transferable jobs prefer the capital city or big cities or near city corporations.

This newly formed group is mostly dependent on small savings and bank loans to be either paid off gradually or after their retirement. So they build these housing societies not in a planned way. Limitation of money hinders them to build housing society that lacks enough space, playgrounds for children, schooling, and pre-schooling facility, planned grocery shops, laundry facilities, and religious institutions. These supportive facilities are important for happy living. 

Housing, especially in a suburban area, just adjacent to but not included in city corporations, turns into an illegal industrial area, which is a risky zone for living. Thus, the residential area becomes a threat to public health. Moreover, the narrow road left for vehicular traffic is impossible to traverse, especially for an ambulance in case of an emergency. People think they would reside in a house that they need only for sleeping and eating, and don’t think long-term of a time when they could fall sick or would necessarily need emergency health services.

Unplanned housing societies produce lots of garbage posing a threat to the environment.  Housing in small cities or adjacent to city corporations or inside the city corporation area are increasingly adding to these problems. If any disaster happens, people of these societies will be hit hard. Cities like Savar, Narayanganj, Tongi, Gazipur, and Nawabganj are seen as urban disasters in the making. 

Fire disasters in the making 

Bangladesh has faced many a fire disaster where unplanned buildings have collapsed like in the case of the Nimtoli fire, Churihatta fire,  etc that caused huge loss of lives. Unplanned construction of these buildings, unauthorized industrial factories inside the residential buildings, narrow roads, and non-compliance of rules, including fire safety rules, by the housing owners, are the main causes of these fire disasters that leave devastation in their wake. 

In most cases, housing societies are formed based on limited income of its members that inhibits proper planning so necessary for healthy and safe living. Everyday urban areas are expanding as the need for housing is growing, leading to unplanned housing complexes, which do not fulfill the requirement of urban housing and eventually become problem areas for planned development.

Here, the government plays an important role. They should force citizens to follow the standard safety procedures while building such housing societies.  It is the best time to stop such type of unplanned housing and develop under the government body, like any housing project in any developed country. Otherwise, it will be too late, as society as a whole will suffer.

(The author is a faculty member at Bangladesh Public Administration Training Centre (BPATC), the apex-training institute for the civil servants of Bangladesh. The views expressed are personal. He can be contacted at reza@bpatc.org.bd)