Harijan sanitation workers and their families formed a human chain at Sir Salimullah Medical College Mitford Hospital in Dhaka on August 27, protesting their planned eviction from the hospital’s No. 1 Menials Quarters. An August 4 notice signed by hospital Director Brigadier General ATM A Rustum ordered several old structures, including the menials’ quarters or “sweeper colony,” vacated by August 30 for demolition, warning that utility connections would otherwise be disconnected.
Resident Joti Akter said Harijan families face discrimination when seeking housing elsewhere. “When we try to rent a home elsewhere and they find out we are sweepers, they refuse to rent to us,” she said. Joti, whose family has lived there for four generations, asked where residents would go if evicted. She stressed that Harijans are citizens with an equal right to housing and questioned why politicians embrace them while seeking votes but their identity becomes grounds for exclusion afterward.
Paresh Majumdar said Harijan families have lived there since Mitford Hospital was established on May 1, 1858. He questioned why development requires their displacement while doctors, nurses and Class III employees have housing on the premises, asking why Class IV Harijan workers should be treated differently. He proposed developing other available areas or replacing the quarters with five-storey buildings without evicting residents.
Moni Rani, a Harijan sanitation worker employed through outsourcing on a daily-wage basis, said workers already survive on inadequate wages that can remain unpaid for three to six months. She said their families lived there even before the Liberation War and asked why people whose labour keeps the hospital clean should be displaced because of their identity and caste-linked occupation.
Residents demanded an end to the eviction. Their testimonies expose how caste and occupational discrimination intersect with precarious labour and housing exclusion: workers whose essential labour sustains a public hospital are simultaneously denied secure housing and pushed toward displacement.
Source: The Daily Star Bangla