If given the responsibility to manage the storm drainage system, the two Dhaka city corporations would play a role in resolving the acute urban flooding and water logging in the capital, Mayor of Dhaka North City Corporation Annisul Huq said yesterday.
The mayor has hardly anything to do practical in this regard, as it is the mandate of the Water and Sewerage Authority (Wasa) to maintain the storm drainage system, he said, while hosting an opinion sharing meeting with the chief executives of television stations at a city hotel.
The Dhaka district administration owns the city canals that are a vital part of the storm drainage system, but out of the total 43 canals in the city, a quarter to half of the width of 23 canals are either grabbed or clogged with solid wastes and delinked with lakes and rivers, he said.
Citing the World Bank recommendation, he said the storm drainage management should be handed over to city corporations.
Mentioning his helplessness as mayor in preventing an opulent Urs festival occupying Anwara Park at Farmgate, Annisul Huq said Rajuk owned the park and police and parliament authorities had already endorsed the event occupying the public place.
All the parks should also be handed over to city corporations for better maintenance, he said.
The mayor said he had initiated programmes on cleaning his part of the capital city with permanent secondary solid collection stations, installation of waste bins, greening the city with gardening, close circuit television (CCTV) cameras for security, a new fleet of public buses for better public transport, and U-loops for traffic discipline.
He said one quarter of the city’s buildings would be green with rooftop gardening and wall creepers all across the city in three or four years. He called upon all to stop rampant wall writing and pasting posters turning the city ugly.
The mayor said he would have to go tough unless the practice was stopped in three or four months. He called upon the owners of new buildings to free roads and footpaths of construction materials.
He said a strip of land along the fringe of Tejgaon old airport would help build a dedicated lane for joggers and cyclists, adding that a see-through wall in place of the existing 3km concrete boundary wall all around the airport would provide a relief in the cityscape for the passers-by.
He also said installation of 72 secondary waste transfer stations in 36 wards was underway for better management of solid wastes, but it was getting delayed due to space constraint as DNCC had 14 sites at its disposal.
Annisul said DNCC was going to set up 2,000 waste bins along 230km DNCC footpaths and 1,000 others at marketplaces by May this year and another 2,000 in next six months across the city to prevent throwing of garbage on the streets and in the surface drains.
DNCC has moved to build 22 U-shaped loops along a 36km stretch of Dhaka-Gazipur road to help ease the traffic congestion, he said.
There will be no right-turn on the road stretching from Masterbari of Gazipur to Satrasta in the capital’s Tejgaon. Vehicles will have to use the loops to turn right.
The city corporations are going to facilitate introduction of a 3,000-fleet new public bus service in the capital by March next year under five company private operators instead of existing 190 to improve the public transport service.
The mayor called upon the television station high officials to allocate some airtime to broadcast public campaign content in support of the corporations’ initiatives, saying three-fourths of the job would remain unachievable without public awareness.
He hosted a similar meeting with the editors of leading national dailies on January 23.
The idea is commendable I sincerely hope that it is implemented with due earnestness.My suggestion is to orgazise participatory management involving the local authentic volunteers.Reward and admonishment practice may be introduced as inducement and to chastise for defaults