Small business, food production for urban food security

Substantial and sustainable promotion of small business and urban food production has become indispensable for freeing the slum community from poverty and hunger, speakers in some ceremonies have said.They viewed there are enormous opportunities of involving slum women in various income-generating activities especially
small business and goat rearing for their long-cherished self-reliance.
They made these observations while distributing block-grants worth Taka 24.40 lakh among 488 slum women for small business and
urban food production particularly goat rearing.
Urban Partnership for Poverty Reduction Project (UPPRP) and Rajshahi City Corporation (RCC) jointly organized the ceremonies
at Law College premises and Bulanpur Community Resource Center separately in the city on Monday.
AHM Khairuzzaman Liton, Mayor of RCC, distributed the bank-chaques as the chief guest saying the effort to uplift the slum
women through grants is always laudable.
He said slum women are subjected to repression and oppression due to their social and financial vulnerability and the
intervention will obviously elevate them.
“Our aims to make the slum households self-reliant,” said adding that the city corporation has been implementing different
anti-poverty schemes and UPPRP is one of those.
“If we could make the slum households self-reliant many of the social curses and crimes could be reduced to a greater
extent,” he opined. Liton urged the chaque-recipients to be more cautious about using the money so that the cherished goal of the
programme is fulfilled.
In an effort to address the vulnerable issues of the slum dwellers, Local Government Engineering Department (LGED) has been
implementing the project in the city with financial support from UNDP in association with UKaid and UNHabitat.
The seven-year anti-poverty scheme, is being implemented for improving the livelihood condition of the slum households
especially women and children.
“We are working here to improve living and livelihood condition of some 70,000 households consisting of around three
lakh poor and extreme poor population through multi-sectoral anti-poverty intervention,” said UPPRP Town Manager Ershadul
Haque.
He said promotion of small-scale business and livestock sector is one of the major components.
With RCC Panel Mayor Shariful Islam Babu in the chair, Ward Councilors Jagangir Alam Alamgir and Bazlur Rahman Montu, social
leader Shaheen Akhter Rainy and UPPRP leaders Nasima Akter, Sultana Rabbani and Shaheeda Parveen also spoke on the occasions.BSS, Rajshahi

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