Nasir vows to end Ctg waterlogging permanently

Awami League-backed mayor candidate AZM Nasir Uddin started meeting the voters yesterday, promising to end Chittagong city's crippling waterlogging once and for all.

"The city is facing two serious problems at present -- waterlogging and poor waste management," he said.

"I assure you of ending waterlogging permanently within five years," the AL city general secretary told reporters after visiting the shrine of Hazrat Shah Amanat.

AL's Chittagong south district President Moslem Uddin Ahmed and Chittagong city Vice President Ibrahim Hossain Chowdhury, among others, accompanied him.

Nasir said, "No effective step was taken in the last five years to address waterlogging, and so it has become very severe now."

"If elected, I would take a three-layer plan -- short-, middle- and long-terms.... I believe waterlogging can be kept at a tolerable level by taking well-planned steps."

He claimed that Chittagong had lost the reputation of being a clean city in the last five years, when his challenger M Manjur Alam, a BNP leader, governed as mayor.

Nasir also met freedom fighters, visited residents of different areas, and was scheduled to sit with businessmen in Khatunganj and Chittagong Export Processing Zone (EPZ) and with Juba League leaders.