NILPHAMARI, Dec 3: Around 10,000 ultra poor people, both male and female, are now engaged in making steam cake (Bhapa pitha) in 60 Union Parishad of six Upazilas across the district. Each of them earns more than Tk 500 per day by selling those.
They usually do the job in the roadside both in the morning and in the evening. In the morning they start the process of making cake at dawn that continue up to 8 am and evening at 4.00pm up to 9.00 pm. The ingredients of making the cake is flour, of non-parboiled rice, molasses, thin coconut slices and so on.
Price of each cake is Tk 10 and each of them sells more than 300 cakes per day. The cake is very tasty and attractive. People used to gather round a shop to purchase to consume and some people take those to their homes for family consumption.
Amina Begum, a widow (50) of Nilphamari municipality, said she makes flour of non-parboiled rice at her home to make the cakes. As a result, those makes it cheap to earn more money.
As a tradition, rural people used to make this cake in their homes for self-consumption during the harvesting of Aman paddy in the winter season. But by now it has become a tool of seasonal business of hundreds of hardcore poor people who are becoming solvent by availing the part time employment opportunity.
