DCC in limbo

In power for what could be called a bonus of a second term without having faced any election, the mayor and councillors of Dhaka City Corporation appear to have fallen into a state of complacency. That is clear enough from the inertia they have remained trapped in, a condition which has deprived the residents of the city of many of the most essential of services.
The apathy of the mayor and councillors is nowhere more in evidence than in the fact that the DCC has held only 16 general meetings, which is far below the legal requirement of the elected officials meeting at least 109 times, since the incumbents were elected to a five-year term in 2002.
The law stipulates that the DCC sit at least once a month to plan its priorities and discuss the process of their implementation. By that standard, it should have held at least 109 general meetings by this time.
The five-year term of these elected officials of the DCC, all of whom owe political allegiance to the main opposition Bangladesh Nationalist Party, drew to an end in 2007.
One reason behind this unusual extension is the apparent disinterest of the government led by the Awami League, arch rival of the BNP, in holding the DCC polls.
The Awami League has not seemed to mind the BNP-led DCC carrying on beyond its term out of fear that it may lose the vote should an election for the corporation be held, according to political analysts connected with the party's top brass.
The corporation, however, did hold ten annual meetings prior to the announcement of its annual budget. In terms of substance, however, these meetings yielded poor results, as some councillors have alleged.
Besides carrying out such formalities, the DCC called some special meetings where the purpose appeared to be making obituary references on the deaths of some councillors during this long period.
Mayor Sadeque Hossain Khoka does not deny his non-compliance of the law. But he does defend his apathy by suggesting that a lack of morale had set in owing to “the expiry of the tenure of the corporation”. Additionally, says the mayor, there has been a “lack of serious agenda” for the DCC to pursue.
Offering his explanation for the poor civil services rendered by the corporation, Khoka pointed out that a lack of coordination between Wasa and Rajuk, neither of which is under the purview of the DCC, is the main factor behind such a dismal performance.
For their part, city councillors acknowledge the failure of the DCC in providing city dwellers with better civic services.
A monthly general meeting of the city corporation was made mandatory under the provisions of the 1983 DCC Ordinance. In October two years ago, the government replaced the ordinance with the Local Government (City Corporation) Act 2009. This provision additionally makes it clear that a mayor or a councillor may lose his or her job if he or she fails to hold or be present during at least nine meetings in a year.
The reality, however, has been different. Since the enactment of the new law, the DCC has had only two meetings instead of the twenty-two that ought to have been held by now. No action has been taken against those playing truant with the law.
But blame cannot be placed at the mayor's door alone. The councillors, who are legally empowered to ask the mayor to convene a meeting, did not exercise this authority in all this time.
The councillors, who head 16 standing committees handling such important services as health, drainage and sanitation, city planning and development, slum development, mosquito control and water and power, have not been active in expediting the corporation's functions. It is a fact acknowledged by the councilors themselves. These committees were formed in November 2004, nearly three years into the term of office of the present team at DCC.
"The standing committees held a few meetings in the beginning. Not a single committee is now functioning. All are dysfunctional," a disappointed MA Mozid, councillor of ward no 55 and chief of the standing committee on mosquito control, told The Daily Star.
Mohammad Mohon, councillor of ward 69 and chief of the standing committee on water and power, said the authorities had forgotten about the standing committees. "Officials of the DCC do not want to make the standing committees functional because in their view they are an obstacle for them in earning money by illegal means," he notes.
DCC Mayor Sadeque Hossain Khoka did not quite agree. As he saw it, "all standing committees are not dysfunctional since some of them are still working. For example, the standing committee on budget works on the preparation of the budget through taking the opinion of all councillors."
"The standing committees are not performing their due functions. Instead, many of them are working as lobbyist groups in order to provide contracts to specific individuals," observed local government expert Professor Tofail Ahmed. He noted that unbridled corruption in the DCC had worsened its already poor performance.
"The corporation has turned into a dysfunctional body because it has not held the polls in due time," he said.
Low in capacity, high in irregularities
Prof Tofail noted that the population under the corporation area has been rising geometrically, but the corporation's capacity to handle such conditions has not increased accordingly.
Official data show Dhaka's population to have been 2.95 lakh in 1947, 34.4 lakh in 1984 and in excess of one crore in 2001. At present, the population in the city is estimated to be over 1.50 crore.
While the quality of the DCC's services has nosedived over the years, its budgets have continued to spiral upward. The corporation in its first fiscal in 2002 had an annual budget of Tk.470 that shot up to Tk.2715 crore in the current fiscal.
"Corruption has been in Nagar Bhaban along with increases in the budget," says a DCC official on condition of anonymity.
The LGRD ministry, custodian of the urban local government body, did not take any move in the last two and half a years to put the DCC on the right track, though the LGRD minister has termed the corporation "a den of corruption" and a "non-functional body".
The late Mohammad Hanif, president, city unit of AL, was elected Dhaka's first mayor at the polls held on March 12, 1994. He was elected for a term of five years, but he continued in office till May 2002 since elections could not be held because of legal complications over a redrawing the boundaries of the wards under the DCC.
The 2002 elections for the mayoralty and 90 general and 30 women (reserved) councillors' seats were boycotted by the Awami League.
Established in 1864, the Dhaka municipality was turned into a municipal corporation in 1978 and subsequently into Dhaka City Corporation in 1990 for a better management of civic services. In 1994, city dwellers, for the first time ever, elected a mayor, 90 councillors to general seats and 18 councillors to reserved seats for women.