WHILE the capital of Bangladesh has gone down to the penultimate position in the liveable city index for the last five years for unplanned urbanisation, the city development authority — Rajuk — arranged some 200 pleasure trips for its officials involving huge amount of public money in the name of urbanisation study tour. The capital city has been losing its liveability since 1991 when the country embraced the open market economy and Dhaka extended vigorously in all directions with millions rushing to reside here. Once famed for its beautiful cityscape girdled by rivers, lakes, greenery and open grounds, urbanisation has been taking its toll on the city’s living condition due to its unplanned and uncontrolled nature. Neither any learning of the “urbanisation study tour” of the bureaucrats was applied to pull back the deteriorating liveability, nor any eco-friendly sustainable method was chalked or executed.
A report carried in a daily said the pleasure tours have cost around Tk 10 crore of public money but yielded no visible result. Four teams, each comprising ten officials on average, mostly bureaucrats serving on deputation at Rajuk, went to Europe, America or Asian countries under the scheme. But, so-called ‘study tours’ did no good, in any way.
The “town planning knowledge” of the Rajuk officials is hardly of any use, as they leave Rajuk after a short stint. Surprisingly a top official, who joined three times in the pleasure trips, could not cite an example in which the “foreign knowledge” has been replicated. The list of officials for the tour also requires the Prime Minister’s consent if the team includes a minister, a secretary, an additional secretary or an agency chief who is not below the rank of an additional secretary.
It is merely a pleasure trip or a wasting of public money for the selected bureaucrats as the chief of the selection committee admitted that the selection process is not done democratically but was compiled due to an accommodation of requests from political and administrative high-ups. The parliamentary standing committee on the Housing Ministry also said the trips were primarily meant for pleasure and shopping and have been of no use to the general public, whose money is spent for this — thus it must be immediately stopped.
Rajuk could seek suggestions from the Urbanisation and Planning experts and also go through diploma courses as several public and private universities offer specialised studies on urbanisation. And the question of properly planned is direly needed to be addressed immediately to improve the situation in the right way. Our political leaders when in power seek foreign visits most selfishly without showing any consideration for the huge expenses of public money. Many officers like them are using public money for private visits abroad.
The fact is our government is too much of a burden on the people.
