ECDO organized two consultative meetings on Indigenous Peoples Issues for Anagrasar Gana Unnayan Project (Backward Community Development Project) supported by OXFAM GB. The venue and date of the Upozella meetings were as follows;

• Jaintapur Upozella Conference Hall, Jaintapur 16th June, 2008 &
• Goainghat Upozella Conference Hall, Goainghat on the 29th Oct, 2008

The meetings were presided over by Mr. Zillur Rahaman Chowdhury, Upozella Nirbahi Officer of Jaintapur Upozella and Mr. A. K. M Tareq, Upozella Nirbahi Officer (UNO) of Goainghat Upazella. Mr. Lakshmikanta Singh Executive Director of ECDO was present as the moderator of both meetings. Sixty six leaders from different indigenous communities attended the meetings.

The aim of the meetings was to encourage indigenous peoples to share their problems with local government officials and to introduce them with local government offices and their duties and responsibilities.

The rationale behind organizing these consultative meetings was to bridge the gap between the indigenous people and the local government. ECDO realized that the local government plays a major role in the lives of the indigenous people and the indigenous people though have the right to address their issues to the Upozella administration, they are not in the habit of doing so. The meetings are therefore a platform where they can raise their issues and the local government gets the chance to understand their problems. Discussions of the meeting help to make suggestions for their solution.

Among the problems highlighted for Jaintapur area were the issue of  land grabbing, lack of proper water and sanitation system, seizure of their traditional graveyard land by a group of  people belonging majority community due to their lack of proper registration, lack of intervention by the local government in their quest for betel production forcing them to use middlemen who buy the product at very low prices from their village, false accusation of criminal activities by some majority people leading to indigenous people to sell their land forcefully at very low prices, loss of indigenous peoples identity, culture and language as they don’t have any institution to nurture and promote their culture, high levels of unemployment among others.

For Goainghat the leaders raised the issues of regular thefts of Betel leaf and betel nut from their farms, the encroachment of their land by river during floods, thefts of stones used for construction work inside from their land by a group of majority community, illiteracy and low enrolment levels in schools, unemployment, overcharge at the ferry, bacterial infection of beetle leaf and nut etc.

An open forum was then held to discuss the issues raised. The moderator presented the synopsis of the discussion regarding the problems of indigenous peoples of the project area. The forum had full participation from all sections of the population from every part of the upozella. It also includes women. Mr. Lakshmikanta Singh then open the floor to the UNO’s to express their views and possible intervention on the issues raised. They tackled each issue explaining how they will delegate to the respective offices such as Upozilla Education Officer, Assistant Commissioner of Land and UP Project Implementation Officer. The UNO’s suggested the indigenous peoples to be quick to inform their Union Parishad (lowest layer of local self government) Chairmen when they have problems as it is their duty to work for the development of their constituents. They both acknowledged ECDO’s efforts in advocating indigenous community rights and thanked the organization for organizing an exceptional meeting.

It should be mentioned that two Upozella project orientation meetings were organized from the very beginning of the project where it explained the activities of the AGU Project and the set budget to all its stakeholders such as the project participants and the local government. Creating credibility and understanding on the project as well as proving accountability and transparency were the main targets of that orientation meeting.