Save the playgrounds
Naome Syed, Mohammadpur. Dhaka
A few weeks back, I happened to know about a recent initiative taken by the National Housing Authority to demolish a beautiful playground in Mirpur-2 for establishing a shopping complex in the area. The idea bothered me because every time the NHA and RAJUK come up with new schemes on lame excuses of developing the lands of Dhaka city, their motives are quite different from what they claim to establish. They are actually favouring the rich businessmen who cannot resist the temptation of lucrative opportunities of profit-making. The government housing authorities facilitate them by grabbing lands which are taken over on false pretence of public-amenity development. Now the NHA has uprooted hundreds of trees turning a children's park into a commercial shopping centre under the name of Dhaka Urban Infrastructure Development project. I don't think that this would mean much improvement because the city needs playgrounds and botanical gardens to have an environmental balance as it is getting over-populated and congested day by day. The recent project of NHA will surely deprive the children from having the little source of entertainment that they used to have. Beautification of the country should not merely be confined to constructing multi-storied buildings but also preserving the limited natural resources that we have, be it the green trees or the playgrounds.
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