DCC is full of original ideas. The latest is the proposed beautification project of the DU campus zone a top priority item brushing aside all other emergency projects having fire for decades!

As a resident of the metropolis since my school days (over 60 years), my query for the mayor is how he chooses the priorities in three main areas: operation, maintenance, and new projects. He hardly talks on the first two items.

The Dhaka City Corporation does not easily get the benefit of the doubt on most issues, and in tackling the day to day problems. There is a growing impression that most of the time construction projects are sought for inclusion while planning development schemes, some of which are not ESSENTIAL; while some have lower priority. There is easy money on the side in construction projects, whereas the life of a completed project is deliberately made short due to poor OC and other systems losses, for re-tendering at a later date. All regimes neglect operation and maintenance and concentrate on foundation stones and opening ceremonies for an overdose of subjective publicity. The O&M system losses are never announced with concrete data (in percentage); and the new projects die out soon after completion; viz: the under and over passes, road dividers, traffic control, unauthorised vehicles and drivers, and third class conservancy services; not to speak of water supply, mosquito control and occupied footpaths.

The management of city corporations needs updating urgently for reforms and implementation in places. The UN foreign donor agencies are rather slow to help in the drafting of the master plans in different areas needed for running a modern city, when the urban migration rate is too fast in the developing countries. Without decentralisation, there is no point in going for modernisation. The ball is ultimately in the court of the political masters, who have other hidden agendas in skinning the opponents.

Long live dead Dhaka!