Green activists at a programme on Saturday alleged that the two city corporations – Dhaka South City Corporation and Dhaka North City Corporation — failed to meet dwellers’ demand for a planned, safe and livable city.
They suggested for building Dhaka a livable city through eradication of water logging, traffic jam and waste mismanagement.
They made the call from a roundtable discussion titled “A Analysis on Budget and Operations of Dhaka City Corporations” organised by Poribesh Bachao Andalan (POBA) at its Dhaka office.
Chaired by POBA Chairman Abu Naser Khan the discussion was addressed, among others, by President of Modern Club Abul Hasnat, POBA Secretaries Sayed Mahbubul Alam Tahin and Ferdous Ahmed Ujjal, Co-Secretaries Architect Shahin Aziz, MA Wahed, Nishat Mahmud, and Members Engineer Tofayel Ahmed and Sagirujjaman Shakik.
General Secretary of POBA Engineer Abdus Sobhan presented the keynote paper in the discussion.
Speaking at the discussion, Abu Naser Khan pointed out that development of the two city corporations could be enhanced by placing allocation in the budget clearly directing towards development.
“All the city corporations’ activities are mayor-oriented but it’s not possible for the two mayors to look into all the development activities of the corporations. So only by increasing the capacity of mayors will not help achieve sustainable development. Rather, the capacity of both the corporations have to be enhanced for proper development,” Naser Khan suggested.
He said: “Different organizations are working on the development issues of the city but we have observed lack of collaboration among them. Mayors are to ensure cooperation and collaborative efforts among them to ensure sustainable development.”
In his keynote paper presentation, Abdus Sobhan pointed out that it’s the responsibility of the corporations to develop contemporary waste management system, ensure smooth vehicular movement, healthcare of the dwellers, clean environment, water logging, free drainage system, and development of integrated traffic management system.
“But in reality both of the mayors have failed to assure dwellers a livable cosmopolitan atmosphere rather dwellers are suffering with deadly diseases like chikungunya, loosing valuable work hours often stacked in traffic congestion and a bit rain dawning them under polluted water,” he lamented.
“So city corporations should focus more on increasing income sources and revenue more to serve the dwellers with adequate service and ensure healthy, sustainable city lives,” Sobhan suggested.
To do so the POBA has recommended for stronger revenue collection system of the corporations like enhancing more holding tax collection network, incorporating all the organizations of the cities under trade licenses, and collect more wheel tax by adding all the rickshaws of the cities.
Besides, they also suggested for contemporary drainage management, preserve water bodies, incorporate dwellers with the development process and develop strategies for increasing revenue generation to attain development with corporations’ own income and thus focus less on the vulnerable projects like mini dustbins rather attain citizen service through developing human resources, infrastructures and capacity for sustainable development of the capital city.
