Slipping thru' the voter net

Enlisting slum people as well as street dwellers as voters remains a tough job for the election officials. Photo: Shafiq Alam/ SK Enamul Haq

Aleya Begum was sitting with her child on the footpath of Kathalbagan Dhal with a small gunny bag containing all her belongings.
“I came to Dhaka eight days ago from my village because my husband is suffering from hernia. He needs an operation that requires lots of money, so I have come here to see whether I can do anything to earn some money,” said homeless Aleya, staring blankly at her child tottering in front of her.
“So far I have managed to do nothing. I went to some houses to work as a housemaid but no one took me because they do not know me. Now I don't know what I will do. My child is starving. May be I will start begging,” she said.
Aleya does not know how long she will stay in this city and where she will be registered as a voter. Like many floating people she does not care about getting registered and does not know how to do it.
“I don't know anything about the voter registration or the national ID card. I am not interested to know about it. At present my main concern is to collect money for my ailing husband,” Aleya said frankly.
In spite of the earnest efforts of the Election Commission (EC) to include all voters in the voter list, a large portion of people who come to Dhaka for different reasons including river erosion and other natural calamities are left out because they do not have an address of their own and the EC is yet to determine what to do about them.
But not all of them are as indifferent as Aleya.
Sharifa and Shoni, two occasional beggars working near the signal stops of Panthapath in the city, are very aware about getting enlisted as voters.
“We come to the city for two days a week to beg. This is our side income,” said Shoni, elder of the two beggars.
“We will get enlisted as voters at our home in Narsingdi. We will be home in time so that we do not miss getting registered as voters especially this time when our voter ID cards will contain photos,” she said with pride.
Efforts are on to register slum dwellers as voters but questions arise what will be the case of the floating population as they do not have any address at all.
Nawabul Islam, district election officer in charge of Lalbagh area, said they are yet to receive any specific instruction on enrolment of people without any permanent or present addresses.
“According to the Election Commission if a person lives at a certain place with or without his or her family, be it a shanty, then he or she will not be considered as a part of the floating population because he or she has an address,” he said.
“Bedes (people having gypsy life on boats) are also getting enlisted. They will choose one boat station where they will get registered as voters as cast their votes,” Islam said.
“If a person does not have a house number and says 'I live beside the red building of school X' we will write his address that way. But if a person sleeps at Kamlapur tonight and at Sadarghat tomorrow and has no certain place of his own, we don't have any specific instruction about him,” he said.
“If these people want to get enlisted they will have to have someone credible who will recognise them as a resident of that area. This is not possible for floating people,” Islam added.
Election Commissioner Brig (retd) Shakhawat Hossain said that to get enlisted as a voter one should have an address of his own and he has to be identified by the local [municipal or union parishad] chairman or member or people living at that place or should have an original village address.
According to the constitution, it is not compulsory to enlist floating people or people with no address. It is out of the purview of the law. But people living in slums or at a certain place will be enlisted, he said.
“All the slum houses have holding numbers under the respective municipalities. So slum dwellers will have no problem in getting enlisted. If a person lives at a certain place even under a polythene sheet, then that polythene sheet will be his address,” the election commissioner said.
“But if someone lives at one place today and at another place tomorrow, then it will not be possible for us to enlist him as a voter,” he noted.
Honorary Chairman of the Centre for Urban Studies Prof Nazrul Islam said since floating people are part of the population and they are citizens of this country, they have voting rights and we must give them national ID card.
In the Dhaka metropolitan area around 38 percent of the population is slum dwellers, squatters on government plots beside railway line or embankments, street dwellers or floating people, he said.
“According to our 1995 survey there were around 20,000 street dwellers in the city, which can now be around 50,000. After any natural disaster the number rises,” said Prof Islam.
Slum dwellers and squatters have an address and they can be identified but street dwellers are hard to locate. They are the real floating people, he said.
“As they do not have an address there are some technical problems in registering them as voters. No one can identify them. What will be their constituencies?”
“But during census we count them because they are part of the population. Most of them become floating due to a natural disaster and have lost their village addresses. This is not their fault,” said the professor.
“We have to find ways to include them as voters. This is something to think about as non-resident Bangladeshis are also to be considered as voters,” he said.
“May be this time EC will not be able to enlist them for some problems but it is their right to have an ID card and be voters if they are above 18,” he added.