MAILBOX
Hatirjheel Stinks!
Hatirjheel project has been a very popular recreational place for Dhakaites. There are very few places in Dhaka city where people can go for a nice afternoon walk. With beautiful lighting, spacious pavements with benches, a nice view of the lake and availability of snacks, Hatirjheel attracts a lot of people particularly in the weekends. However, Hatirjheel has already lost much of its charm due to huge traffic congestion and mushrooming of food carts that have been polluting the place by throwing away garbage here and there. Due to constant pollution and lack of water treatment facility, during every dry season, Hatirjheel Lake turns blackish and the odour of the black water, filled with rotten food wastes, becomes unbearable for the local residents. I would like to appeal to the concerned authority to take immediate steps to revive the beauty of Hatirjheel so that people of Dhaka can visit the place for recreation and the local residents can live in the area in peace.
Md Zonaed Imran
Rampura, Dhaka
Justice Delayed, Justice Denied
The collapse of Rana Plaza is the deadliest structural failure in the modern history. 1,129 people were killed under the rubble of the nine story commercial building and at least 3,500 people were injured. I learned from the article titled "How Much Is a Worker's Life Worth" that the High Court has stated this tragic incident as a manmade disaster. It is a verdict that paved the way to get justice for thousands of unfortunate victims. After this verdict, the main culprit Rana, the owner of the faulty structure can easily be brought to book for homicide. When Rana was arrested from the Benapol border, we all hoped that he would be given exemplary punishment as no lawyer agreed to work for him. However, it is a matter of great regret that four years have passed since the incident and his arrest, but no significant improvement has happened in the judicial process to try Rana. There are examples in our country where justice could not be guaranteed only because of the procrastinated judicial process. We should take lesson from these examples and speed up the trial of Rana so that tears of thousands of victims and their family members do not go in vain.
Sayek Ahmed Sajib
Department of English, University of Rajshahi
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