Wetlands, water bodies must be recovered

The draft master plan of the capital city has to have strategies to recover and conserve the proposed water retention ponds, water bodies, lakes, canals, and rivers, said a leading urban planner on the concluding day of a two-day national seminar yesterday.      

The government has to take immediate measures to acquire such dedicated areas for conservation; or it will soon become impossible to reclaim those if they are encroached upon and see construction, said Md Akter Mahmud, general secretary, Bangladesh Institute of Planners.

The existing master plan dedicated 405 sq km area of the city as conservable flood flow zones and water retention areas, canals, lakes and rivers, and 330 sq km as agricultural land.

But experts now fear that real estate developers have ravaged most of those areas.

The Rajdhani Unnayan Kartripakkha (Rajuk) organised the seminar on the proposed Dhaka Structure Plan 2016-2035 on its office premises. 

While talking about open spaces and liveability, Akter, who took part in the discussion on the proposed 20-year draft structure plan of Dhaka Metropolitan Region, said the plan should propose a way to ensure access to open spaces like parks and playgrounds.

In the 151 sq km core city area, there is only 305 acres of parks and playground, most of which remain illegally occupied, he said.

He proposed involving mayors and councillors so that the parks and playgrounds remain open to the public and their total coverage increases.

The draft plan proposes development of a "green network" at Tejgaon old airport and should introduce aesthetic urban design, said Akter.

Zeenat Nahreen, a planner of the proposed plan's consultant Sheltech Private Ltd, said in her presentation on affordable housing that 60 percent of an estimated 17 million population in 1,528 sq km area of Dhaka city could not afford housing of their own.  

The government has to either arrange housing based on subsidy and hire-rent-purchase or go for slum development to house those people, she said.

The concluding session was chaired by former Jahangirnagar University Vice Chancellor Prof Amirul Islam Chowdhury.