I have been a day labourer in Dhaka for around 40 years now. Even a few years ago I could more or less manage my family expenses with my earnings. I could even save a bit occasionally. But things have turned really bad over the past two or three years. The price of commodities has shot up and work opportunities have decreased. Now expenditure outweighs income.
My wife and I are both day labourers. Together we earn around 26,000 to 28,000 a month. We live in slum on Sher-e-Bangla Nagar. We spend around 23,000 taka on house rent, firewood for cooking, medicines and food. Then there is the 5,500 taka monthly installment we have to pay on a loan we had taken. So we are completely empty handed by the end of the month.
We wait in long lines at the government hospitals, but still don't get to see the doctor. When we do get to see a doctor, the medicine he prescribes in often not available in the hospital. The budget should make provision for medical treatment for persons like us
Given our income, we hardly get to buy meat or fish from the market for our meals. For people like us, there is not much scope to increase our income or cut expenses either. With the price of essentials shooting up, we now buy rice, lentils, oil, sugar per gram. So for day labourers like us, what we want from the budget is for the price of essentials to decrease. Our sufferings increase particularly with the increase in the price of rise, lentils, onions, sugar, potato, eggs and chicken.
The market for day labourers is going through hard times. Earlier we would get work 15 to 20 days a months, now we hardly get to work even 10 to 15 days a month. The last four days, for instance, we had no work. I am over 63 years old. Many don't want to take me to work because of my age. It is steadily getting tougher to earn a living.
As we have no permanent address in Dhaka, we don't have a TCB family card. And as we work as day labourers, we don't get the time to stand in the long lines waiting inordinately long to buy OMS rice and flour. Sometimes we don't even have the money. Under such circumstances, we demand that day labourers like us be given separate cards. It would be good for elderly persons like us to receive a special allowance.
If we suddenly fall ill, our sufferings multiply. We wait in long lines at the government hospitals, but still don't get to see the doctor. When we do get to see a doctor, the medicine he prescribes in often not available in the hospital. The budget should make provision for medical treatment for persons like us.
* Md Siddiq is a day labourer at Sher-e-Bangla Nagar, Dhaka