Playground turns into car fair venue

The lone playground in the capital's New Colony neighbourhood, which was supposed to be swarming with children and people for recreational and leisure activities, is instead filled with cars on sale. Local ruling party men have long been renting out the field for display of cars every Friday, depriving the residents of recreational facilities and damaging its surface. The photo was taken yesterday afternoon. Photo: Palash Khan

Some local ruling party men have taken over the only playground at New Colony in the capital's Lalmatia to make brisk "businesses", depriving the residents of recreational facilities.
Local people said a section of local Awami League leaders who are running a club called "New Colony Krirachakra" is regularly renting out the playground for a car fair every Friday. Some officials of National Housing Authority (NHA), owner of the playground, are also getting benefit from the rental.
Every Friday 150 to 200 cars are displayed on the playground between 9:00am and 8:00pm. The fair authorities do not allow sports during the fair, said local people.
These political leaders have also set up a makeshift kitchen market of around 200 stalls on the western side of the playground. The club authorities take Tk 30 to Tk 50 a day from each of the shops, said the traders.
The same club authorities also allowed Aarong to set up a car park during the entire period of Ramadan as the superstore does not have a parking space.
Mohammad Alam, a resident of New Colony, said over 100 children of different ages used to play on the playground every day, even at night, around five years back. “For the last five years, the playground has been used for anything but sports,” Alam said.
For the last two months, all sports activities have halted on the playground, as the vehicles from the car fair have damaged the surface of the field. The condition of most part of the playground is totally unsuitable for cricket or football. An initiative by the local youths to develop the playground was foiled by the political leaders last year, said locals.
The organiser of the car fair called Car Bikroy Mela Ltd, Abdullah Al Mamun said they had obtained permission from National Housing Authority. “We also pay a certain amount to the club for the fair,” said another director of the Mela.
President of the club and ward-32 AL president, Masud Bari said they did not take any money from the car fair. He said the fair did not hamper recreational activities of the children of the area as half of the field remained empty.
Bari said the kitchen market was also running due to demand of the local people and it ran just for three days a week. The market has been running since the tenure of caretaker government which was started by the name of BDR market, he said.
About parking of the customers' cars of Aarong during Ramadan, he said as the customers' cars of Aarong overflowed at that time and it created huge traffic congestion, they allowed to the vehicles to park on the playground. He denied taking any money from the cars or Aarong.
General Manager (Retail Operation) of Aarong, Abdur Rouf said they did not have any link with the parking on the field. "As we have space to park only around 10 cars, a huge number of cars of customers during Ramadan parked on the field on their own initiative," he said.
SAM Fazlul Kabir, superintending engineer of Dhaka circle of NHA, said they had not given any permission to anybody for using the playground. “Everything is going on illegally. The field level officials did not take any action against the illegal users."
Executive Engineer of NHA, Mohammadpur Dhaka Division-2, Zahed Hossain said they could not take action against the illegal activities due to political influence. “We are not aware of anyone taking money for renting out our playground,” he added.