Extortion in a different form

By Saif , Dhaka
23 November 2004, 18:00 PM
The responsibility of collecting kitchen waste and other garbage and its safe disposal rests on the city corporation. But due to the their 'sincere' service some people have taken the job of collecting the garbage on area basis and this is a good effort.

Recently, we shifted our house to the Central Road area of Dhanmondi. Here this noble work is done by some boys' club and they charge Tk 30 per month for this from each family. (It was 10 taka in the area where we previously resided) They collect it in the first week of the operating month as they pay their employees in advance! Here, most of the buildings have six stories or more. In a six storied building at least 15 families reside. So they are getting some 450 taka from a single building. Any one visiting this area knows how many such buildings are located here. So you can imagine how much they get in a month. In the month of Ramadan, boys from the same club sang religious songs and helped us to get up for Shahri (though not regularly but to their sweet will) And the price was Tk 50. I have learnt that here the cable tv operators charge Tk 400 per month , which is some Tk 200 in all other places in Dhaka (something I could not afford). Nobody seems to care about these things.