Dhaka city dwellers are decreasing day by day and the highly-centralised city is being naturally decentralised, thanks to the coronavirus. Decongestion of highly-congested Dhaka looks plausible as buildings once abuzz with tenants have been disappearing behind the signs ‘To-let’.
Prime locations, where ‘To-let’ or ‘Flat for rent’ signs are hung, landlords are scrambling to put their signs on top or front of all. Anybody, walking down the lanes of Dhaka city, will see ‘To-let’ signs are hanging from buildings because the tenants of these houses have been rendered jobless due to coronavirus.
It has become a signature feature of the capital’s Hatirpool, Azimpur, Arambagh, Shahjahanpur, Malibagh, Moghbazar, Khilgaon, Mirpur, Mohammadpur, Mahanagar Project, Nakhalpara, Tejturipara, Farmgate, Manipuripara and Old Town areas. Everywhere residential buildings are carrying one or more than one ‘rent-a-flat’ signs. Some ‘rent-a-flat’ signs also carry the message of flexibility in rent negotiations which for the tenants was earlier unthinkable because the landlords used to be always superior in such deal.
The wage earners and small traders of the megacity are deserting their dwelling places as coronavirus and lockdown have bogged down their job and livelihood. To smooth out the effects of the coronavirus, the economic migrants of the capital are shifting their families to their village homes. Furniture removers have become very active in the city as people in droves are packing and shifting their household articles.
But the landlords, who used to live off rents, are left in a quagmire in the coronavirus situation. Some landlords, who used to charge rent ridiculously high, are now negotiating for low rents as they feel a dearth of potential tenants.
A landlord of the Mahanagar Project on condition of anonymity said, “We have a total of ten flats in this five-storey house. We own three flats in the building. We live in one of them and live off letting off two others. In the last three months, both the flats have been lying vacant as we can't find any tenant. I have told the doorman to tell the actual rent of the flat first but let him or her know the rent is flexibly negotiable. It is like rubbing salt in our wounds,” he said.
Sixty-six days passed after the coronavirus had dealt a blow to Bangladesh on March 8 and meanwhile a lot of calculations are reversed. A recent BRAC study paints a grim picture of the economic condition of the people affected by Covid-19. It said 62 per cent of those working in the capital on a daily wage basis had lost their jobs and 36 per cent of people have lost their jobs. And most of those who lost their jobs have migrated to villages.
According to the Natundhara Bangladesh (NDB), an organization working for the rights of tenants, about two crore people live in the capital city Dhaka. Of them, the tenants make up around one and a half crore and a large part of them have left the capital, leaving about 40 per cent of the houses in Dhaka city vacant.
Jamil Ahsan, a resident of Azimpur in the capital and father of two children, used to run a bookshop in Nilkhet. His eldest son is a second-grader and the youngest daughter studies in Kinder Garten. He fell into misery due to the coronavirus.
“The first two months I managed things somehow paying salaries to his employees of the shop, house rent, food and other costs; but in the third month, I had to say goodbye to the employees. Finally, I was forced to pack and shift my residence from the city and leave for the village home. As children are doing online classes, so it won’t hamper their education,” said Jamil hoping that they will return to Dhaka once normalcy returns to the city.
Jamil is none but a representative of the lower-and-middle-class people.
Forty-year-old businessman Russell Ahmed, a resident of New Market area of the capital, used to deal in cloth in Chandni Chowk. He has been living in Dhaka for about 15 years. He was having a good time with his wife and child. But with the pandemic of coronavirus, everything suddenly changed.
“In the beginning, I managed the sudden blow somehow, but with the misery protracted with the days gone by. I was badly burned by the salary of the employees, the rent of the shop, the expenses of the family and the house rent. I started firing my shop staffers one by one.”
“But that was not enough. In the meantime, I defaulted in paying house rent for two months. I left all of my furniture with my landlord and decided to quit Dhaka for Dinajpur with my family,” said Russell ruefully adding that government has stimulus package or soft loan or food aid for the working classes but middle-or- lower middle class are left out.
Senior NDB vice-chairman Shanta Farjana told The Business Post, “Currently, about 40 per cent of the houses in Dhaka city are vacant. We went on a hunger strike on April 21, 22 and 23, demanding action from the government. But even then we could not draw their attention to our demands. Then we orchestrated ‘Road March’ and gave a memorandum to the Prime Minister, sporting a four-point demand. We described the plight of both the tenants and the landlords. Our demands included the government should subsidise the house rents, exempt the landlords from paying gas, water and electricity bills.”
“But our calls go unheeded rather government agencies are urging the customers to pay the bills through an announcement in different neighbourhoods. Now the economically and emotionally drained tenants are departing from Dhaka for their ancestral homes,” she said adding that none expected such deplorable condition of the city.
aa/wi
