Korail slum dwellers: Where do they come from?

Asma's father, Ajmol Mia, was not even married when he came to Dhaka from Noakhali back in the 1990s.

While working as a newspaper hawker in Tejgaon, he got to know of a place where cheap food was available, and anyone could grab some land and build a home.

In 1996, he married Julekha and by 1998, he brought his wife and little son to Dhaka. "We stayed in many places in Mohakhali and Tejgaon. But they were so empty back then that Julekha felt lonely.

So, I brought her to Korail where people like us came from around the country", Ajmol said. Back then, houses in the area were made of wood and corrugated sheets.

In 2002, Ajmol and Julekha built their home there and before it burnt down in the fire of 2017, that is where the family lived.

In 2009, a group of researchers from Icddr,b and BRAC conducted a study on Korail slum and the title of the study was 'The Perceptions of Community Groups to Improve MNCH in Urban Slums:

An Exploratory Case study of Korail Slum in Dhaka'. The study found that the slum communities came to the city from different districts and that the earliest inhabitants came from Cumilla district, hence giving the name 'Cumilla Potti' to that cluster.

With time, people from other districts began to arrive including Barishal, Bhola, Sherpur, Barguna, Chandpur, Jamalpur, Mymensingh, Kishoreganj, Faridpur etc. They formed different groups according to the districts and lived collectively in a cluster throughout the Korail slum.

The poor communities migrated from their rural area for diverse socio-economic and environmental reasons including land scarcity, river erosion, and climatic disasters.

The 2009 study also showed that approximately 71% of the total population living in this area have been here for more than the last 10 years. The minimum length was three years and maximum length was 18 years.

Asma and her family have been living in this slum for the last 26 years. After the fire incident, Ajmol took loans and rebuilt the two-storey residence which has 17 rooms on rent and three rooms to themselves.

With the Tk25,000 from rent that Ajmol gets, he has to pay off the interest on the loans he took.

"For the last few years, my father sold fabrics and clothes on the Gulshan-Mohakhali footpath but he lost that spot during a police eviction two months back.

Now, he is planning on taking another loan to start a bhaater hotel in Korail," Asma said.