Hundreds of children left orphaned by the Rana Plaza tragedy – the collapse of the nine-storey building that killed over 1,100 and injured over 2,000 – are passing their days in misery and staring ahead to a bleak future.
‘My mother always dreamt of making me into a doctor,’ said Sagarika Akhter Mim, 11, daughter of late Jahanara Begum, an operator at New Wave Style garment factory who perished in the collapse. ‘Now I don’t know what will happen to me in the future.’
Mim is currently under the care of Sheba Nari O Shishu Kollyan Kendra, an organisation working to help around 25 children of the victims of the tragedy. The officials of the organisation are trying hard to convince her father to continue with her education, as he is more inclined to take her back to their village home.
Most others, however, are not even as lucky as Mim, as the most of projects directed at children of the victims of the Rana Plaza collapse have now closed down. Meanwhile, no government agency, non-government organisation and voluntary organisation has a complete list of the number of children left orphaned or affected otherwise by the Rana Plaza collapse three years back.
Bangladesh Shishu Adhikar Forum chairman Emranul Huq Chowdhury said a list of the victim’s children was very essential to take necessary initiatives for them in future.
‘The causalities of adults and children are not same. If we had a list of victims we could take up safety net programmes for them,’ he said, calling for an immediate initiative by the government or BGMEA for a fresh list.
Some non-government organisations, who separately ran different projects for children, said they had no information beyond
their projects, which mostly closed a year back.
The Savar local administration however said though they have no complete list of orphaned and affected children, a list could still be prepared by reaching out to individual local authorities who distributed the compensation among the victims’ families.
Savar upazila nirbahi officer Mohammad Kamrul Hasan Mollah said as far he knew through his involvement with the rescue and support programme after the Rana Plaza collapse, no one made any list of the children of victims in these three years.
Only three schools at Savar provided a list of students whose parents were victims of the tragedy. At least 37 such children went to Emandipur Government Primary school, 15 at Savar Model Government Primary School and two students were at Genda Government Primary School. About 200 other local schools did not have any record of which of their students was among the victims.
Bangladesh Garment Manufacturers and Exporters Association said they have taken on the responsibility of 58 children left orphaned by the Rana Plaza disaster – 10 boys are at ORCA Homes in Chittagong, 19 boys and 9 girls are at ORCA Homes in Gaibandha and 20 girls are at Anjuman Orphanage at Savar.
BGMEA officials said they were not aware of the whereabouts of others.
A non-government organisation working with children, Village Education Resource Centre, who provided educational, financial, logistic and life skill training to at least 330 children or their able family members after the incident, did not continue the support due to a crisis of funds, said officials.
‘We had limited funds so we did not carry out a full survey of how many children were victims of the incident but during rescue operations we collected some names from secondary sources and
supported the children under our project,’ said Babul Moral, a project manager of VERC.
He said at the end of the project none of the children contacted them and they also could not follow-up on the children.
Another organisation, Sneha Foundation, who also facilitated at least 132 child victims of the incident for a year, now have no connection with the victims.
Founder of the organisation, Hema Helal, said despite her best efforts she could not hold back the children as their families moved out of Savar and back to their village homes.
Hema said, by her calculations, roughly 3,000 children were left victims of the tragedy.
‘I have heard a number of times that many of the guardians of surviving parents of the children marry them off in return for a handsome dowry,’ she said.
Only Sheba Nari O Shishu Kollyan Kendra is still running a centre at Emandipur in Savar where the 25 children are given tuition, food and some other opportunities.
Executive director of the Kendra Sayeeda Roxana Khan said ‘When I started this programme there were a huge number of victims in the Emandipur area but now the number has come down by less than a tenth.’
Victim Kamal Hosen left behind two sons who are now living with their mother Sheuli Akter at Dhaka Uddan area of Mohammadpur in the capital. Since their father’s death no one came to the children, said Sheuli.
‘They have broken down mentally,’ she said. ‘They feel alone and insecure everywhere.’
Source: New Age
