Dhaka city environment: Count down to catastrophe?
The magnificent sight of the city that looked like a newly-wed bride's necklace at night was a rare spectacle. But behind the euphoria, aura and bonanza lay hidden the suffering and woes of the vast populace living in the bigger area of the city. If this transformation was achieved to ease the suffering of the city dwellers living all around, people would have hailed it and given our leaders a standing ovation.
It happened all the time in the past and it continues to happen now as well. In villages and towns, bereft of the most basic services, let a VIP from the government show signs of arrival and roads suddenly appear where there were dirt tracks, pucca buildings even materialise out of thin air and even reliable power supply becomes mysteriously available. Once the VIP disappears after making his inspection, or laying foundation stone or shedding crocodile tears or accusing the past regimes for all the ills, everything goes back to normal squalor once again. Why should it? If the government can work so hard for VVIPs of other countries, or even for ministers in the country who are supposed to serve the people, then why can't it do the same for the commonman?
For all latest news, follow The Daily Star's Google News channel. Perhaps, because we have allowed our VVIPs in the country to develop an inflated sense of their own importance by allowing them to think in VIP terms. Perhaps, because we are used to living in the Third World, third-rate conditions, we expect no better.
Or, more probably, because we have government to abdicate its real responsibilities. When Dhaka Airport to Sheraton Hotel to Zia Uddyan roads and roadside areas were being cleaned and beautified during the last few months to give our foreign dignitaries an impression that the government is functioning properly, people only wonder why this garbage clearance activities, beautification programme or road construction and maintenance activities can't be extended to other parts of the city that are virtually stinking in heaps of garbage.
In the teeming older part of the city and even in the newly developed parts like Gulshan, Baridhara and Uttara, filthy water choke drains. DCC officials must admit that the city's garbage collection points are nothing more than open heaps of refuse. It's because development has taken place before proper planning and that only one-third of the city has the underground sewer system. Dhaka is symbolic of the ills that plague the country's dirty urbanisation.
If Dhaka City Corporation or WASA can't cope with the enormous task with their own resources then they should invite public participation such as exhorting the business community, NGOs and development workers as they did for the beautification work of the city on the eve of the SAARC Summit. But it is hardly possible that municipal services like maintaining roads and sanitation, waterbodies and healthcare facilities and providing clean drinking water will improve because transactions and official business in the country have been redolent with the stench of corruption as usual. Small wonder, after its decision to demand refund of a paltry sum of Tk 6.8 crore made available projects in health and local government on the grounds of corruption in the form of collusive bidding the reported decision of the World Bank about cancelling and withdrawing Tk.167 crore allocated earlier for repair of 600 km roads damaged during the last flood should be a matter of great embarrassment for the government. It is unfortunate that the present ruling coalition so vocal in its condemnation of the past regimes for their alleged role in different shady deals, is also seen to be allowing its party functionaries to collect funds in the most sleazy fashion. It looks bad, very bad indeed even if the LGED minister has assured the World Bank that the guilty would be punished.
Visibly, there is a feeling of disgust and disenchantment about government policies. If our cities looked like proper cities instead of slums, water bodies like rivers and lakes within the city limits were maintained properly, sewages drained out and villages provided with the basic amenities, then there would be instant support and public participation. As for example, Uttara Model Town is growing without the basic amenities like park, graveyard, recreational spots for children and at points even sewer lines. Inside the western portion of the Dhaka-Tongi road, Uttara Lake, once a beautiful transparent water body flowing in between sector nos 3,5, 7,13, 9 and 11 is now a giant sewer as raw sewage, toxic effluents, garbage are discharged into this from some dyeing and textile units and mainly from residential houses. The lake has almost been silted up with construction materials and wastes thrown into it at will. Because of the excessive toxic effluents drained into this lake fishes of different varieties cultured there are dying everyday. Despite complaints lodged with the Environment directorate no remedial measure to stop this menace has been taken. Most of these dead fishes laced with toxins like cadmium and chromium might have gone to market without anybody's knowledge.
It is not a pretty sight: poisoned lakes, fouled river, murky air and so on. Thwarted by the apathetic administration, people in the posh area of the city even do now have to pay the price for the carelessness. Quite pathetically the city as well as the satellite town Uttara are sliding into a morass of problems. The stark reality is that the state of affairs in the most glittering Baridhara, Gulshan, Banani and Dhanmondi areas are equally gloomy and frightening. Behind the blinding glitter of the new millionaires, the city is failing bulk of its citizens. Even the basic rudiments of civic life and civil behaviour seem to be evaporating. The disaster causing death to huge fish population in these lakes has resulted because WASA or other utility agencies perhaps installed network of sewer lines keeping the lakes as discharge point. The disaster is compounded by the criminal action of allowing industries to live cheek-by-jowl with residential quarters and apartment blocks. Alarmed citizens know they are being slowly poisoned but seem helpless.
Often activists or even high officials fired by ideas, social and ecological concern act as catalysts and can nudge the government or agencies concerned to come up with solutions. It so happened in Nainital in the Uttaranchal province of India. Naini lake, prime attraction of the tourists considered a summer resort was dying with silt and refuse being dumped into it for a long time. Efforts to salvage the lake came to a grinding halt as the estimated expenditure, as the govt. file spoke stood at Rs 42 crore. Happily for Uttaranchal, Aradhana Shukla, 37, an IAS officer posted as district magistrate in Nainital authored a little revolution within six months of her posting there. Through her untiring efforts and missionary zeal, the famed Naini lake got its beauty back.
Aware of the fact how difficult it would appear for the government to stake so much money in one lake recovery project, she invited public participation.. The district magistrate as a folk heroine could be sighted at lakeside even at midnight guarded by one gunman only. Faced with a bewildering problem, she thought she could do something. So she reached out to the people and the response was overwhelming. Excavators donated by the lake conscious businessmen and trucks provided by the Truck Owners' Association to take the silt away made the tough job easier. Nainitalians danced not only to the rhythm of silt lifting excavators, they also danced to the redeeming tune of the district magistrate who was there at wintry midnight supervising the clean up operation. The lake was salvaged through public participation and Aradhana Shukla was called the Lady of the lake.
Along with Uttara lake, Gulshan and Baridhara lakes have the same tale to tell. Could there be some one from the industrial conglomerates, business community and public leaders who would come forward to save these water bodies, the essence of life in a polluted city? With land grabbers filling up the lakes for commercial interest on one side and pollution and effluents discharged into them at will, these water bodies are almost dead. So is the story with rivers Buriganga and Shitlakhya flowing by the twin cities Dhaka and Narayanganj. Rarely does anyone living in Dhaka or its satellite towns realise it has rivers like Buriganga, Shitalakhya and the magnificent lakes. If a city has a memory, the Thames would be always a part of London's eternal psyche. For Paris so would the Seine be. For Toronto, the lake Ontario, for Chicago the lake Michigan. And for New York, the Hudson river with its slow, deep-throated underflow. Alas! not for Dhaka though the river Buriganga still exists and flows by it. Shockingly, in absence of clear foresight, vision and proper planning, Dhaka city has turned into a cluster of apartments and markets. With the last remaining open spaces and water bodies fast disappearing due to illegal encroachment and wilful destruction, the city has become a concrete jungle with hardly any space for breathing and walking.
Happily at a time when grabbing of wetlands, rivers and lakes is the mantra of wealth creation, the media is jolting the government to take a hard look at the havoc they have wrought. The recent move to grab a part of the Gulshan lake is a case in sight.
As the RAJUK chairman said in an interview with The Daily Star recently that with water body protection act passed in Parliament RAJUK's no objection certificate obtained in 1995 and building construction approval in 1997 would not hold water and be annulled by the court. But it is the general public who have to wake up and resist such sinister designs. Protest and rallies must hammer out the problems of inaction on such issues that pose a direct threat to citizens' life.