Saving waterbodies, mosquito control among top priorities
Dhaka South City Corporation (DSCC) Mayor Sheikh Fazle Noor Taposh yesterday announced a Tk 6,119.59 crore budget, with a major focus on recovering waterbodies, mosquito control activities and ensuring recreation facilities for city dwellers.
This is the first budget of Mayor Taposh after taking office. He announced it at Nagar Bhaban.
The budget is Tk 2,488.19 crore higher than that of the last fiscal.
In the budget, DSCC kept Tk 150 crore for the renovation of the old channel of the Buriganga, and Tk 250 crore to recover land along the river and construct roads and parks there.
The mayor said they want to bring the canals and waterbodies under the city corporation's jurisdiction and if necessary, they want to build walkways and parks along the banks.
DSCC is not the only organisation responsible for solving the city's waterlogging problem, but people expect more from the mayor and the city corporation as among the organisations only mayors are elected by them, he added.
"The government organisations responsible to maintain canals and waterbodies are not doing their duties properly. The city corporation will not take the liability of their negligence anymore," said Taposh.
He also said, "Following the will of Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina, we want to make the old town free from encroachment and pollution, for which we want to make the old channel of Buriganga -- that flows between Old Dhaka and Kamrangirchar -- more aesthetic after recovering it from encroachers."
He said they have already started the work and the Military Institute of Science and Technology is consulting on the project.
"We will also recover all the canals in Dhaka and we will do the necessary maintenance work," he said.
Taposh said they will also take initiatives to extend the banks of the Buriganga and Shitalakkhya rivers, along with making the road communication system more dynamic.
DSCC in the current fiscal kept Tk 35 crore for regular mosquito control activities which was Tk 43.30 crore in the last fiscal. In addition, it kept Tk 300 crore for comprehensive mosquito control activities for the first time.
"There is a huge number of waterbodies in the city which turned into breeding grounds for mosquitoes. These have become stagnant due to encroachment and pollution," the mayor said.
He said they have cleaned many of those and released fish and ducks as a part of their mosquito control activities.
About garbage management, the mayor said they have a plan to set up Secondary Transfer Stations (STS) at all of its 75 wards."We hope we will be able to set up the STS in 31 wards by December 31," he said.
On road digging by different utility service providing organisations, which leads to public sufferings, the mayor said they will not allow any organisation to dig city roads within three years of its construction or repairing works.
Responding to a question on overhead cable lines, the mayor said they will conduct a drive from next week in this regard as well as initiate a project for stray dogs from next month.
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