The nightmare city

A.N.M. Nurul Haque

Sun Nov 1, 2009 11:00 PM Last update on: Sun Nov 1, 2009 11:00 PM

PRIME Minister Sheikh Hasina announced her government's plan to construct elevated and underground railways, flyovers, circular waterways and roads to ease the city's traffic woes. The announcement came while she was replying to queries in the Parliament on October 28. The prime minister also said that her government had begun a project to upgrade Zia International Airport, construct a bridge linking Arong at Tejgaon and the Gulshan shooting club, and coordinate a development project in Hatirjheel to solve the traffic tangles in the capital.
The local government (LGRD) minister recently expressed his grave concern about Dhaka city in the Parliament, apprehending that an unimaginable environmental disaster was awaiting the city dwellers. According to him, severe water logging and scarcity of drinking water would make the city unlivable soon. Dhaka city dwellers have become quite accustomed to hearing for many years such promises of turning Dhaka into a city fit for the 21st century, but have hardly seen any initiative that would suggest that there is hope for the future.
The painful reality is that Dhaka, as the capital of Bangladesh, remains a problem-ridden city with terrible traffic congestion, scarcity of electricity, gas, and drinking water and lack of life security, despite the spree of promises made by all governments.
A recent survey revealed that Singapore edged out Tokyo and Hong Kong as the best city in Asia for expatriates to live in while Dhaka was the worst, just ahead of Karachi.
Barrister Nazmul Huda, the communication minister of the BNP-led alliance government, made lots of hollow promises to change Dhaka into an international standard capital like Paris, Tokyo or Vienna. Syed Abul Hossain, the communication minister of the AL-led grand alliance government, who recently visited the Kanchpur bridge area in the capital, found no traffic congestion there and rebuked the media for stories about traffic jams.
Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina has announced that she will establish elevated and underground railways to solve the capital's ever worsening traffic congestion. In fact, the elevated expressway was conceived at the summit level talks between Bangladesh and Thailand in 2002 when the then Thai Prime Minister, Dr. Thaksin Sinawatra, paid an official visit to Dhaka.
The Thai Exim Bank had also agreed to finance the project on favourable terms, but it was foiled because of a mysterious tug-of-war between the communications ministry and the Dhaka City Corporation over the right to supervise the project. An amount of Tk.107 crore from the public fund went down the drain when the mega project of circular waterways around Dhaka city was shelved. The project was taken up in 2004 ostensibly to reduce traffic holdups in the capital.
The Mughals established the city of Dhaka on the bank of the mighty Buriganga in the early 17th century, considering the immense beauty and potentiality of this river, with its vigorous flow, for growth of trade and commerce. With huge encroachment of its banks by land grabbers and severe contamination of its water, the Buriganga has now turned into a septic reservoir, with about 22,000 cubic metres of toxic tannery waste dumped directly into it everyday.
The total population of Dhaka grew from 0.1 million in 1906 to 12 million in 2008, but city authorities could not prepare and implement any effective plan to cope with the growing population. Although two master plans for the city were formulated as long ago as 1959 and 1995, they were never implemented. What is now imperative to make the capital livable is to curb further unplanned sprawl of the city.
Land grabbing and river pollution are no doubt major causes of the environmental disaster in the city. Land grabbers have now extended their greedy hands into the canals and rivers around the capital city. The Buriganga, Shitalakhya, Turag and Balu rivers, which flow around the city, are also being sacrificed to the greed of powerful people who have grabbed their banks and beds.
The rivers that once flowed in abundance around the capital city are now dwindling. The grabbing of riverbeds has gone to such extent that it has become quite difficult to recognise the existence of these rivers at many points. The waste emitted by industries set up along these rivers has heavily polluted the almost stagnant waters.
The capital city, which is the face of the whole country, has already been made too ugly to behold. The ever-worsening traffic tangle, pollution of air and severe scarcity of electricity, gas and drinking water have turned the capital into a nightmare city. The government needs to urgently take some real steps to make Dhaka livable before undertaking ambitious plans.