Soon after setting up of the British trading settlement in that country in 1819 on a treaty signed between the then Sultan and British citizen Stamford Raffles, who discovered the island of Singapore from his ship Indiana that was engaged in search of a settlement, the Singapore population started growing very rapidly due mainly to immigration from neighbouring and other countries.

At the very beginning, human habitation in the island was in a very disorderly manner. With a view to providing proper housing for the people, the Singapore Improvement Trust (SIT) was established by the British government in 1927. During the 1927-1941 period, the SIT built only 2100 housing units whereas the post-war year experienced more housing shortages.

In 1957, the housing problem turned very acute. It was estimated that about half a million people were still then living in slums and squatter settlements. During the election campaign that year, the People Action Party (PAP) felt the urgent necessity to resolve the problem and pledged that if elected it would look into the matter seriously. On being elected and forming government, it took immediate step to solve the housing problem. The SIT was dissolved and the Housing Development Board (HDB) was set up in its place in February 1960 to provide public housing.

The HDB's concern was to plan and build homes affordable for the poorer group of people. This board conducted a survey to find out the housing needs of this section of people. It was estimated that about 11,000 homes had to be completed each year for the next ten years in order to provide a flat for every such family. That is it had to build 110,000 housing units in a span of ten years. In its first Five-year Building Programme, the HDB had to build 51000 low-cost housing units for the people belonging to low-income group.

The HDB's such ambitious housing programme was a gigantic and difficult task for a newly formed organisation that had no experience. It had many knotty problems before them. The main problem was lack of adequate land area. The HDB had to deeply think how to make best use of the available land. At the same time, it had to think about keeping the cost of construction low so as to make housing affordable to the low-income group.

Resettlement of the displaced people of the slums was another problem before the HDB. In the process of clearing slums, the people living there had to be resettled to the newly built housing estates. But many people were not willing to move out of their homes. Although the task was difficult, even then it was necessary for the government policy of bettering the living conditions of its people. In the pursuit of the policy, many members of Parliament had to go round to persuade people to move. To make them agree to move to new sites, the slum people were given money as a form of compensation for moving out of their old homes to the new sites.

Slums often experience big fire causing loss of property. The HDB in such cases stretched its hand to help affected people. Many of the victims were to move into newly completed flats on various sites. At this stage, the HDB acted quickly to build flats on the site of the fire and the fire victims were fully settled there. Initially, mostly one room and two room rental flats were built in the housing estates. These housing estates had facilities like schools, markets, clinics, food courts, parks etc. so that people find it convenient to live there. These flats were of simple design and lay out, but served the basic needs of the people.

In the year 1964, the government introduced the Home Ownership Scheme to allow its citizens to buy and own flats. The government subsidised such flats. But even then, many people could not afford to buy those. The government went further to allow people to use their Central Provident Fund savings to buy such flats. This helped many people to become owners of such flats.

By adopting such arrangements, the HDB fulfilled its target of the Five-year Housing Plan. There were several reasons that contributed to the HDB's success. Firstly, the HDB received strong support from the government, which allocated a large amount of fund to the public housing sector. This enabled the HDB to build houses on a much larger scale and at a faster rate. Within the ten years, the HDB achieved the target of building 1,10,000 housing units covering one third of the island's population, most of those from the low-income group. As the HDB flats were meant for members of the low-income group, families with a combined monthly income of $800 or less were considered eligible to buy such flats.

With the economic growth of the country, people were looking for better living conditions, and the HDB started paying more attention to improving the planning design and architecture of housing estates. At this stage, housing estates were provided with sufficient car parking, children play ground etc.

Private homes were quite expensive. To cater housing facilities to higher income group, the HDB raised the maximum income level for the Home Ownership Scheme. To cater to the needs of this group, Housing and Urban Development Company Pvt Ltd (HUDC) was set up.

In the early 1960s, people rented out the housing units built by the HDB as they lacked the sense of belonging because they were not the owners of such flats. Taking this into consideration, the Home Ownership Scheme was introduced. The HDB planned to sell its flats to all and sundry to avoid discrimination among its citizens to bring people together. To this end, community centres were set up in such housing estates enabling people of all walks of life to participate in different functions, which brought cohesion and a sense of unity among its residents.

High standard in such housing estates were maintained as those were provided with all modern amenities.

Although Singapore, being a small island-city state, had very small area to build up, it quite amazingly reclaimed land from the sea bed to build new residential areas. Some of the satellite housing estates built on this reclaimed land are Punggol, Senkiang and Kampong. With the spreading up of living areas, extensive transportation system has also been arranged, although the whole Singapore city is now under an underground transport system called MRT (Mass Rapid Transit) and State Bus (SBS). The far-flung newly built residential areas are connected with a small carriage train called LRT. These LRTs have stoppages almost in all the housing estates leading their passengers to the nearest MRT stations. The LRT stations have already been built in all the existing sites of housing estates and even this network extends to the future housing estates that are yet to be planned and completed. This clearly shows the foresight of its planners.

The expansion of all environment-friendly planned residential areas has made Singapore one of the most modern states for living. It has transformed the state from an island of slums and squatter settlements in the 1960s into a modern city with high-rise housing estates. Since 1960s, high-rise housing estates have become a unique feature of Singapore.

In response to a question why many countries failed to provide low cost housing to its citizens, Lim Kim San, the HDB's first chairman, said, "It is a question of political will. The political will makes possible whatever is required to achieve any goal.

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Bangladesh presents a case similar to the one experienced by Singapore during its early days and may take lesson from it. Reclaiming land from sea and the terms of disposing of the built-up flats, especially for the low-income group, are some of the areas we should certainly learn from.

We think that the Bangladesh Bank's recent decision to provide adequate loans for the people belonging to the low-income group to facilitate buying flats is a right step. If there is a political will, funding will not remain as a constraint. The world has become smaller and co-operation between states is now-a-days a very good sign. Bangladesh may take advantage of the situation.

Bangladesh may spread residential areas to far-flung areas providing same facilities as in Singapore to satellite towns, which would reduce congestions at the centre. Sound planning will certainly improve environmental hazards.

The writer is former president of Khulna Chamber of Commerce and Industry.