Rickshaws and Dhaka
I do agree with the points highlighted by Mr. Sikander Ahmed on the rickshaw issue ( DS 08.09.08) and express all my sympathy for the senior citizen of the country. I personally feel his agony as I was also living at Niketon a few years back.
However, all the past governments and the respective citizens of Dhaka city failed to highlight the city's need of having planned roads and the Dhaka city bypass, keeping in mind the fast growth (planned & unplanned) of the city in the last 20-25 years in terms of business and population. Also the government and the residents during that time should not have let the city turn into a garment industrial park. With the growth of the garment industry, more and more people started to come to Dhaka and live permanently causing a huge population boom in no time.
The government probably let the industry develop at the heart of the city as there was nothing much of any business and industrial activity in the country alive and the residents rented out there homes, plots for quick cash without hesitation and consideration of the future. As a result, we see a different Gulshan, Mirpur and Malibagh today. If that time around people who were at their prime age did take up the issue with the government, write articles highlighting the different issues like we/they do in newspapers now, certainly it would have helped the city fathers and administrators of the past to take action, and we would not have to come to this situation at all now.
I am not a government functionary, nor am I a worker/member of any political party but as a resident of Dhaka & as a Bangladeshi I would like to ask the past generation (Our grandfathers/fathers) why would any government of recent times take the blame for not being able to control the traffic? What exactly the generation of the past did during their prime? I think they were too busy increasing the number of family members and did not have enough time to foresee the future of Dhaka and Bangladesh. It is true and it may sound ugly to some, that today or tomorrow the rickshaws in the Dhaka city have to go. No matter what their contribution are to the national GDP. As a fast growing city, Dhaka cannot certainly have slow moving vehicles on its major streets ( even a poor city like Kolkata couldn't). We all no what miseries the rickshaws bring to the traffic. Apparently, rickshaws look innocuous as they are human powered and don't burn any gas or petrol, but they are one of the main reasons for the city pollution as far as sound and air are concerned. Due to the rickshaw, the faster vehicles have to honk (though some car owners/drivers honk for no reason) and in the traffic jams/congestions the cars waste fuel and send a lot of carbon dioxide into the air.
Let's hope the government can successfully implement the 20-year long Mega Transport Project and if this is done I am confident that the Dhaka city will be able to bring the traffic to systematic operation for the next generation who will be residing in the city.
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