Saifuddin Ahmed

Saifuddin’s vision of a liveable city is one that prioritises the environment, public and road safety and basic rights of general public. He believes that a living space is most effective when all these areas integrate to ensure that the public are provided with a safe, healthy and free living condition. Over the last 18 years, Saifuddin has successfully influenced public policies and institutions in Bangladesh to improve its health and public transport.

Saifuddin’s vision of a liveable city is one that prioritises the environment, public and road safety and basic rights of general public. He believes that a living space is most effective when all these areas integrate to ensure that the public are provided with a safe, healthy and free living condition. Over the last 18 years, Saifuddin has successfully influenced public policies and institutions in Bangladesh to improve its health and public transport.

Saifuddin has built and leveraged the infrastructure and process to identify, advocate and implement strategic policies. In identifying issues to address, he looks at major problems surrounding the “liveability” of people, affecting poverty and compromising greater public interest. His track record shows that the sort of issues he picks, require both behavioural and policy reforms; often involves large scale solutions. He has built a strong network of citizen sector organizations, activists, leaders, policy influencers that can be mobilized to advocate for and implement policies that improve the living conditions in Bangladesh. In a country where policies are often steered by strong private and political interests, he has also nurtured a process to work with the bureaucrats and policy makers with evidence based proposals to integrate critical and often ignored areas of health, transport and human rights.

The efforts of Saifuddin and his network have already brought in key structural and policy shifts in Bangladesh. For example, the Bangladesh Anti-Tobacco Alliance (BATA) which he anchored as was successful in influencing the Government towards pushing through various policies including complete ban on all form of tobacco commercials, tobacco controls in public places, increased taxation etc. To take the load off roads and make public transportation safer, he also conceptualized and successfully led the process of advocating for a separate Rail Ministry in Bangladesh.

With his past success in working with the public authorities, he is now working closely with the Rail Ministry and other agencies to push for an integrated public transport system. Quite recently they have implemented pilot initiatives like zebra crossings, separate pedestrian lanes around schools, bicycle lanes and stands. Last year the Government has approved National Multimodal Transport Policy 2013, which prioritises safe pedestrian-environment, according to WBB Trust’s proposals.

Rapid and unplanned urbanization have resulted in most of the major cities in Bangladesh to become unliveable. Issues affecting a city, whether roads, transport or public health are poorly planned and executed by separate Ministries without any understanding of the interlinkages between projects, in the short or long term. Such fragmented approach along with lack of coordination between agencies results in absence of holistic approach to a cities health and safety. As a result, Dhaka, the country’s capital has been recently ranked as the second least liveable city in the world. Although most of Government’s infrastructure developments are Dhaka centric, poverty rate in Dhaka stands at 55% (23% higher than the rate in Bangladesh). Such poverty also is not only indicated by the economic status, but is also worsened by the underlining issues such as pollution, poor housing and transport and public health issues.

Bangladesh urgently needs an integrated and strategic approach to issues facing its bigger problems. While there are several citizen sector initiatives in Bangladesh that target specific / local issues, such as education, employment or healthcare services at the grassroots level, there is little focus on issues such as noise pollution, trasnportation, safety or public health. Further, existing CSOs lack the skills and collective power to shape and influence policies at the national level. In the context of corruption and vested interest of private parties on many issues that affect citizens, there is an urgent need for a collaborative platform for citizen sector organizations to leverage their collective strength to influence policies.

For example, according to study, about 45.9 million people or 35% of the Bangladeshi population consumes tobacco. In addition, there are about 1.2 million affected with various smoking related diseases, with about 95,000 deaths a year. Addiction and health shocks from tobacco causes a large segment of the population (especially the working poor) to go into poverty. Cigarettes have also progressively become more affordable. In 1990, 100 packs of a local cigarette brand cost an amount equal to 16.8% of average annual per capita income. But in 2006, the same 100 packs cost only 6.6% of average annual per capita income. While the tobacco lobby was strong to push for incentives and benefits there was no platform or lobby to push for regulation. With little control over advertising and promotion, new entrants are able to capture market share quite effectively, encouraging more companies to enter this lucrative sector.

Similarly, the inefficient and unsafe transport system has a huge bearing on the everyday lives Bangladeshi citizens. Recent study shows that the cost of traffic congestion in Dhaka costs the city about $3.8 billion a year. While BRAC study shows that road accidents across the country is another cause for poverty and takes out approximately 2.2% of its annual GDP. Public authorities lack the creative abilities to explore solutions. While the Government has been making efforts to revive infrastructure, with wider roads and flyovers across the country; it is still proving to have very little impact on the number of casualties every year. Private and political interests of bus operators and infrastructure companies have ensured that the countries rail and inland water transport system remains heavily under-used. Considering the effectiveness of rail transportations, it has seen very little developments since the Colonial period; in 1940, the rail line was approximately 2835 km, and currently it is only 2835 km.

Saifuddin’s core team at Works for Better Bangladesh (WBB) researches and identifies key and niche issues warrant systemic and macro level shifts in policies. Saifuddin’s primary objective is to ensure that the people are able to live in a city which is environmentally friendly, safe and one that ensures basic rights. With these focus, he targets issues that require urgent attention and yet are often under-resourced. His strong and creative research team maps interlinked issues and collects critical data. This helps them identify strategic macro level solution and also build the evidence to support their advocacy work.

Key to effectuating this change has been the strategic network of 700 CSOs that he has built across different sectors in Bangladesh. Saifuddin ensures that this ‘National Secretariat’ is well represented from regions across the country. The National Secretariat not only represents the interests of people from their locality but also plays a critical role in building awareness in their respective locations. WBB Trust acting the central coordinator, also invests in the capacity building and adding value to these CSOs. These organizations are a critical part of Saifuddin’s work; he applies creative strategies to empower and recognize them. Over the years, Saifuddin has ensured that these organizations also build their own credibility and relationship with bureaucrats. He also ensures that the Secretariat does not become fund driven one, which could result in undesired issues and control by funders to suit their interests. He is currently working on a model to provide seed capital for these CSOs to support them in their work.

For instance, in the case of the anti-tobacco campaign, Saifuddin realized that he had to not only influence tobacco consumption behaviours but also simultaneously push for stronger policies and regulation. Building on in-depth study of tobacco consumption and its relation to poverty, he developed awareness campaigns to discourage tobacco consumption. To influence policy, he formed the Bangladesh Anti-Tobacco Association to carry out a multi-level advocacy with demonstrated practices around the country. As Bangladesh had very limited regulations on tobacco, his team placed forward a proposal to the Government that would see a complete ban on all tobacco related advertising, increased taxation and country wide bans on tobacco consumption in public places. Their efforts succeeded when the Government signed the FCTC – the WHO Framework Convention on Tobacco Control Treaty in 2003. Their greater success came with the passing of a unique comprehensive law, The Smoking and Using Tobacco Products Act Usage (Control), 2005. The law provided for restrictions on smoking in public places; restrictions on tobacco advertising, and promotions. They were also involved in discouraging farmers for tobacco cultivation; loans for the cultivation of other cash crops as alternatives to tobacco was initiated.. BATA also worked to envision and put in place rules, regulations and structures that ensure its effective implementation. With continuous advocacy by BATA and WBB Trust, the Government further amended the 2005 law by an amendment in 2013 that further enhanced the previous law to prohibit smoke free places, labelling of tobacco products and packages, sponsorships etc. British American Tobacco (BAT) is the largest company to operate in Bangladesh, paying the highest tax and working with strong lobbyists and politicians; with BATA, WBB Trust continues to play key role in ensuring that the laws are implemented an followed accordingly. Currently, they are working to ban BAT from sponsoring and organizing youth based events and activities. They carry out innovative awareness campaigns around schools, colleges and universities, targeting the youth to educate them on health implications of tobacco consumptions. With Saifuddin continuing as a Coordinator of BATA, he mobilizes his team with WBB Trust to initiate and lead most activities implemented by BATA.

Similarly, later in 2006 Saifuddin began exploring solutions to making Dhaka more liveable and saw transportation issues as a critical issue affecting citizens with direct impact on poverty. While the efforts of the Government were focused on improving road infrastructure and transportation, he realized there was a need to explore alternative solutions that would take pressure off the roads and meet the needs of a growing population. He and his team at WBB say opportunity in leverage the highly under-utilized rail and inland waterways for public transportation. However, they recognized that developing the railways was not a priority was it managed under the Ministry of Communication, which was responsible for both roads and railways. As a result, budget allocation and infrastructure development were prioritized for roads with less attention given to railway. Further, private interests of bus operators and companies ensured that railways remained inefficient. So they decided to advocate for a separate Rail Ministry.

Saifuddin and his network engaged the authorities and policy makers to recognize the potential benefits of this with a both short-term and long-term proposal to revive railways. He ensured that the rail authorities were included in the entire advocacy process and placed them at the forefront of the advocacy process. As a result of these efforts, a separate Railway Ministry was announced in 2011. Since then, the number of daily trips has increased by 8,000. The Government also increased the railway budget between 2011-12 by almost six times; with a planned budget forecast to increase by 10% up to 2018. Saifuddin is now working to ensure that the promises of an efficient rail transport is achieved. While major restructuring are being seen within the railway infrastructure, there are plans to increase the number of rail lines to accommodate more travels. Since 2009, 45 new passenger trains have been added with 20 more to enter service. A separate team at WBB works closely with the rail ministries to advice on infrastructure, route planning and effective allocation of funds. They have recently advocated two additional lines for commuter trains between Dhaka-Tongi (popular short-distance route for city commuters).

Similarly WBB Trust took on a “walkability” initiative where they are trying to promote the fact that walking does not only have health impact but also is an alternative mode of travel. In 2011, they have then engaged Asian Development Bank (ADB) and local government to form a Non-motorized Cell (NMC) to implement a pilot project that would demonstrate this. In addition they continue to engage their usual process in advocating on safe pedestrian zones, zebra crossings as part of policy reforms. While working on the “walkability,” Saifuddin realized that there is a big obstacle with safety concern of pedestrians. Based on a study he carried out, he found out that petty street crimes are uncommon in areas where there are street hawkers. However, due to no legal permits of these hawkers, they are often in the hands of local miscreants; they are often required to pay them money. Using the lens of safety, he is advocating with the Government to provide licenses to these street hawkers. He is trying to encourage the Government since the taxes collected from these hawkers alone would be a big source of revenue; in addition bringing them under a network could assist the law authorities in controlling street crimes.

Saifuddin understands that changes in physical and policy environment require time and persistence. He believes that there is no single solution to large scale solutions and changes require mobilization of resources simultaneously. Under the banner of “liveable city” project, Saifuddin wants to demonstrate that with rapid urbanization, economic progression and national developments, a country needs to ensure that its people and communities are healthy and safe. With mainstream transportations (i.e. road based transports) dominating the transportation space, he believes it is important for a shift towards alternative and non-motorized transportation; an approach that could bring about direct and indirect impacts on the economy, poverty and health. Building on his success with tobacco control, Saifuddin is mobilizing his resources in bringing about major reforms in the rail, water transport, bicycles and safe pedestrian zones towards an integrated transportation system.

During his undergraduate years, Saifuddin started working as a volunteer or Udichi Shilpi Goshti (USG), an organization founded by Satyen Sen. USG is an umbrella of artists, intellectuals and academics that promotes public interests through cultural activities. While most of his peers were joining recently popularised student politics, Saifuddin immediately found inspiration in USG, initially working as a tea boy and eventually moving to an operation manager role. With a strong family background in the social sector, he was captivated by the ideologies and philosophies of Satyen Sen and other leaders in USG. In his time here, he coordinated the activities of 212 branches of USG across the country. He was also involved in ensuring proper conflict management among the staffs, members and offices. Saifuddin still applies his ideologies and learning from USG days. Saifuddin’s adapted principle of working towards serving public interests during the USG is still applied with his initiatives in WBB Trust.

Saifuddin went on volunteering for distribution initiatives for a number post natural disaster incidents in Bangladesh. Through these involvements, Saifuddin came to realize that the voices of rural people are often either ignored or misinterpreted. He continued to share his experience with USG and involve in discussions to address public interests effectively. Post his graduation; He started his own business in the real-estate segment. Over the years, his business interest expanded to cover logistics and trading. In 1997, Saifuddin founded WBB Trust perhaps more out of an opportunity and chance than his desire to be involved in advocacy work. In 1997, when the problem of tobacco consumption in Bangladesh came to his attention, he saw an opportunity to go beyond just awareness and more towards advocating to the policy level. He along with his wife, who is a public health specialist, formed a team to craft out some possible controls that they can propose. Bringing together different citizen sector organizations, they formed the Bangladesh Anti-Tobacco Alliance (BATA). In WBB, Saifuddin set out to work with the same ideology that adapted in USG, where the public interest is given utmost priority. Realizing the scale of work required, he brought on-board some of his colleagues from USG who share similar passion and interest.

Since then, Saifuddin has led his team and the CSO network to successfully campaign and advocate various policy reforms. He has anchored the work of WBB Trust since its inception and places the alliance, bureaucrats and secretariat at the very core of his work. He self-finances his organization with earnings from his personal ventures.