[0:01]Anguri Begum lives with her husband in a small one-room shanty hut in Dhaka's Tejgaur slums. Their only child died recently. She works in a bottling factory and struggles with her monthly expenses. Without her husband's income, it would be hard for them to get by. Despite the hardship, both manage to save a small amount of money each month.
[0:25]There are many problems here in the slum. We have to buy water, pay rent, pay money to use the toilets, even buy wood for cooking. It's hard. It's not a clean place to live. You often get sick here and there's no help from the government. I decided to follow Anguri Begum based on her daily needs and see how far I can go on $5 for the next 24 hours. I brought basic food items that's needed to cook in a daily meal. I brought some vegetable, some onion, potato, spice, green chili, coriander, cauliflower and a couple of fish. The groceries cost me $4.12. I had a simple breakfast consisting of dry cake and milk tea at a local tea stall. Which cost me 35 cents. Now I still have to buy water for drinking and cooking and pay to use the toilet and bathing facilities for a day. A daily need in the slum which all together cost me around 40 cents. At the end of the day, I'm now left with barely 13 cents after meeting my basic daily needs in the slum. Anguri's daily chores don't end till late at night. After she finishes work, she has to clean and cook. She can't always afford a healthy meal. Some days it's just rice and lentils. Most of the slum areas are congested, overpopulated with poor drainage and waste management. Kids and adults live in a very unhygienic conditions. Parents are unaware about the importance of healthy diets for the kids, nor can they afford it. The Bangladeshi economy has been growing recently, but with the prices rising for food and other essentials, it's getting increasingly more difficult for wage earners like Anguri to survive on the minimum wage set by the government. Tanvir Chowdhury, Al Jazeera, Dhaka, Bangladesh.
