Khasland can arrest poverty: Advocates

DHAKA, July 12 (BSS) - Advocates of khaslands from different parts of the country held a meeting in the city today, suggesting the government to free its lands from the clutches of a section of influential people and distribute those among the landless extreme poor to arrest poverty.

The khasland advocates, who belong to a pool of non-government organizations, said Bangladesh has an estimated 3.3 million acres of khasland, while conservative data shows 6-7 million households have no land assets and are known as landless.

They said each of the landless households could be given half an acre (0.50) of khasland and with this, a big number of hardcore poor people could be brought out of abject poverty before 2015, a year for which United Nations has set a target to halve the number of world's poor.

The observations came at a discussion organized by SHIREE, which stands for Stimulating Household Improvements Resulting in Economic Empowerment and is known as partnership between the UK Department for International Development (DFID) and the Government of Bangladesh.

The partnership aims to enable one million people to climb out of extreme poverty by 2015.

The discussants shared the challenges and opportunities in attaining and making productive use of khasland as an instrument to arrest poverty, especially for the extreme poor, who have an average income of less than Taka 27 per day.

Mokhles Rahman, Center for Natural Resources Studies, and Sonia Kabir, Uttaran, presented their research outcomes from real experiences in Rangpur and Satkhira.

Mokhles referred to the tendency of a section of wealthy people taking possession of the khasland and put it to profitable commercial use.

The researcher, Sonia, said the quality of khasland should be evaluated before distribution because all lands do not have equal
values and some are in extremely adverse conditions, which would
yield little results.

Sonia said lands of low quality, undersized or the lands that are inundated during high tides would hardly benefit the poor people.

Colin Risner, CEO of SHIREE, said collaboration between NGOs, local and national government bodies, donor agencies, was of utmost importance to achieve sustainable impacts in poverty reducing initiatives.

The discussion, moderated by Dr Joe Devine, also came up with a set of recommendations that include collecting definitive data on total amount of khasland, simplifying the khasland forms and application process, making transparent the role of union land offices, setting up upazila and district khasland distribution committees, ensuring the poorest receiving lands and allowing women without sons to get access to khasland on a priority basis.

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