Master plans for rivers
The government presented to us, on July 21, two decade-long master plans to protect five rivers in Dhaka (Buriganga, Turag, Balu, Dhaleswari and Pungili) and two in Chittagong (Karnaphuli and Halda) and their tributaries. Government officials belonging to different ministries and departments were involved in making these plans. While the government must be congratulated for formulating a plan to regain the rivers to be implemented over several phases, our experience of implementation of masterplans is rather bad. The first and foremost question is that the authorities have not shared with any stakeholder precisely how they have gone about making the master plans, or without taking any inputs from them.
We have, over the decades, witnessed the lack of commitment of the authorities to master plans. They have been openly flouted, regardless of court rulings and campaigns by activists and the media. Hence, the latest plans ought to be taken with a pinch of salt because all the rhetoric that has been made at policy level over the last two decades about protection and preservation of rivers have resulted in exactly the opposite, i.e. more encroachment, more pollution and nothing of substance about following what is written in master plans.
This brings us back to the question of implementation of the plan in toto. What we do not need are futile and hollow promises. Unlike other master plans, such as the Dhaka DAP, we hope that it will not be scuttled by vested interest groups. We feel that by following landmark court rulings that have been made over the last decade to free the rivers from the juggernaut of vested interests, a new exercise of formulating a plan might not have been necessary at all.
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