CTG Mayoral Candidates: Pledges are beyond their mandates
Most pledges made by the mayoral aspirants of the two major parties -- Awami League and BNP -- in their manifestos for the January 27 Chattagram City Corporation election are beyond the legal and financial mandates of a mayor, experts said.
Speaking to The Daily Star, local government and urban experts said the promises made by the AL mayoral aspirant Rezaul Karim Chowdhury and his main rival BNP's Shahadat Hossain on the mass transport system, river and canal reclamation, stopping of hill cutting, land management, resolving housing and water-logging problems are not under their jurisdiction.
"The mayoral candidates just mentioned those in their manifesto to woo and attract voters," said urban researcher Prof Nazrul Islam, also chairman of Centre for Urban Studies.
The eminent urban expert also said, "It seems the mayoral candidates have made such pledges without having an understanding of their mandate and jurisdiction."
Local government experts said that in a bid to materialise those pledges, the government will have to delegate its power to the city corporation or a city government will have to be formed.
"But we have no instance of any political government delegating its power to a local government body like the city corporation," he said.
Architect Iqbal Habib, also joint secretary of the Bangladesh Paribesh Andolon, said that among other jobs, city corporations collect revenue and take care of vital civic amenities like waste collection and management, mosquito control, maintenance and repair of roads and footpaths, surface drains, street lightings and fighting food adulteration.
Both Rezaul and Shahadat, in their manifestos, gave priority to ending waterlogging and overcoming traffic congestion in the port city and promised to resolve the issues, if elected.
However, these vital issues remain under the jurisdiction of the Chattagram Development Authority and the Chattagram Metropolitan Police traffic department.
On Saturday, Rezaul announced his 37-point manifesto while Shahadat announced his 9-point one on the same day.
Some of the pledges in Rezaul's manifesto are: eliminating waterlogging, 100-day priority projects, resolving traffic congestion, restoring discipline on roads, evicting occupants of canals and rivers, managing waste, developing Chattogram as the country's tourism capital, restoring the lost natural diversity and environment of the port city, harnessing the importance of Chattogram in the Blue Economy, building a mosquito-free city, and discouraging the construction of unplanned facilities.
But most of the pledges he made are under the jurisdictions of other authorities.
Shahadat also gave eradicating the waterlogging problem the highest priority.
He said,, if elected, he will recover the city's canals to build a waterlogging-free Chattogram and build dams to protect both sides of the canals, taking effective measures to prevent the slicing away of hills in the city.
The BNP candidate also said fertiliser and electricity will also be generated through waste recycling.
Experts said most of the promises made by the BNP candidate are not totally under the jurisdiction of the CCC as various concerned government ministries and departments are looking into those matters.
Dr Mahfuzur Rahman, convener of Chattogram's Public Health Right Protection Committee, said as per the third schedule of the Local Government Act, all sorts of responsibilities in the city has been given to the mayors of city corporation without empowerment.
The mayor has responsibility but no power, he said.
According to Article 59 of the Constitution, all the government officials and staffers would go under the local government but a law in this regard has not been enacted. So the mayors, virtually, do not have any power to address most of the pledges in their election manifestos.
Only the system of the metropolitan government can address the issue, Mahfuzur said, adding so the public representatives in local government institutions should raise their voices to introduce the metropolitan government system.
Otherwise the mayors would pledge to voters but in many cases, they would not be able fulfil those and consequently the voters would be deprived, he said.
Asked, why the mayoral candidates, despite knowing their limitation, offer such pledges, Mahfuzur said many of them do not have a clear idea about their mandate and others do it to be popular amongst voters even after knowing they do not have the mandate to meet those pledges.
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