<i>Children's park finally freed from clutches of occupants</i>

A PWD signboard at the entrance to the Dhanmondi children's park declares it a public place open to all.Photo: STAR

In the wake of public outcry, the Public Works Department (PWD) has recovered a children's park in Dhanmondi from unauthorised occupancy.
The PWD on March 25 pulled down two signboards of Dhanmondi Cricket Academy and put up a notice that says the playground is meant for use of the locals for sports purposes and that it cannot be used commercially anyway.
Dhanmondi Cricket Academy had been occupying the playground at the intersection of road-3, 4, and 5, for past several years without permission from the authorities and using it exclusively and commercially to earn money.
The locals in the neighbourhood became very vocal in recent times demanding retrieval of the park from unauthorised occupancy.
“We came to know about its illegal occupancy recently. We have already informed the chief architect of Bangladesh verbally, seeking a plan on how to maintain the park,” Abdullah-Al-Safi, chief engineer of PWD, said.
“We will develop it as per the architectural plan,” he added.
Abdullah said that he would officially write to the Department of Architecture soon on how to enhance natural beauty of the park. “PWD never handed over this children's park to Dhaka City Corporation (DCC),” he noted.
Replaying to a question on PWD's silent role for the past several years, he said, “Nobody had ever reported to us before that unauthorised people were occupying the park.”
According to Safi, parks and playgrounds in the capital should be under the supervision of the respective owning agencies to ensure better and proper maintenance.
Locals of Dhanmondi, expressing a strong resentment over unauthorised occupancy of the park, demanded recovery of it from exclusive and commercial use.
On the other hand, DCC, official custodian of a good many city parks and playgrounds, has failed to live up to its duty of preserving and protecting the public spaces.
The role of DCC in maintaining the city's public parks, playgrounds and open spaces has always been dubious, leaving them in a deplorable state, environmentalists alleged.
According to Prof Muzaffer Ahmad, a noted environmentalist and chairman of Transparency International Bangladesh (TIB), DCC is duty-bound to preserve and protect open space for the people, as obliged by its institutional mandate.
But the DCC has consistently been apathetic to conservation of open space and devoid of commitment, as it itself has destroyed a good many open spaces, said Prof Ahmad.
The DCC regularly rents out playgrounds allowing commercial events like fair, music concerts and wedding ceremonies in exchange of money.
Sources said an unspecified number of city parks and playgrounds are either commercially used or in unauthorised possession.