Staff Reporter :
Legal actions will be taken from October 20 against the government, non-government entities, and individuals responsible for making canals and ditches dirty under the Dhaka North City Corporation areas.
DNCC mayor Md Atiqul Islam on Wednesday said this during a visit to Godakhali Canal at Mirpur 1.
Atiq said that there were 16 canals and a number of ditches in the DNCC areas. All these sources of mosquitos should be cleaned up by October 20, he said.
‘I want to gift a Culex-free city as I have gifted an Aedes-free life to the city people,’ he said.
The mayor said that from October 20 to 30 he would inspect all the canals, and DNCC would fine any agencies ‘whether it is public works, civil aviation, and Dhaka WASA or any non-government entities, and individuals’ if wastes were found there.
He said that 13 more canals with a length of 39 kilometres at newly merged 18 wards of DNCC would also be renovated soon.
The mayor also urged the city dwellers to take care of the canals and not to dump wastes that disrupt flow of water and pollute the water bodies.
‘We have found hundreds of carpets, dozens of sofas, television sets, broken refrigerators, suitcases, pillows, and 200 truckloads of coconut shells in different canals,’ he said.
Architect Iqbal Habib, who accompanied the mayor on the spot, said that DNCC’s solid waste management was not satisfactory. So, the dwellers were forced to dump those into the canals.
‘People dump wastes into canals as they are not given a better city… we cannot scold them for this,’ he said.
The architect also said that reclamation and beautification were the ways to save the canals.
