No room for boarders
A six-storey building in East Rajabazar has been evacuated recently. Almost all the rooms rented out to 140 boarders are locked from outside, with lights switched off.
In the capital, it is a rare sight – darkness engulfing an entire building after sunset.
During a visit yesterday, this correspondent found not only this building but almost all boarding houses in the area vacant.
A local vendor who was upset with the sudden decline in sales said boarders started to leave on Monday. Before that he saw police looking for boarding houses in the area.
He spoke to a few boarders when they left, and learnt that the managements of the boarding houses had issued notice asking them to vacate their rooms by December 25.
The notices also said boarders should not return before December 31, said the vendor who didn't want to be named, fearing police harassment.
When approached, a man who runs a nearby boarding house admitted that no one was living there since Tuesday but said he didn't know why the boarders had suddenly left.
A nearby women's boarding house, however, had residents still living there.
“Some of them had gone to their village homes to vote. But almost half of the residents are still here,” said the owner of the five-storey female hostel.
The Daily Star obtained a notice that a boarding house in Panthapath had put up, asking its boarders to leave by yesterday and return after December 31.
Meanwhile, two other female hostels in Lalmatia had been vacated after the owner told the boarders that they should leave by December 25, said a resident who is now living with her local guardians in Shanir Akhra.
Like the hostels mentioned above, other boarding houses in Indira Road, East Rajabazar, Pathapath, Mirpur, Farmgate and East Tejturibazar were found vacated.
Chowdhury Mess on Green Road, which has 72 tin-roofed rooms – accommodating more than 300 service holders, businessmen and students – had a handful of residents yesterday.
Meanwhile, Dhaka Metropolitan Police put up a notice on its website saying that it had given no instruction for single boarders to leave boarding houses in the capital.
A member of the management of Master-er Mess at Nababerbagh near Mirpur Beribadh said police had asked the residents – mostly rickshaw-pullers, labourers, auto-rickshaw drivers and small traders – to show them documents like national identity cards, inquired about their work and where they are from.
Intimidated, more than half of the residents left the mess last week.
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