Leaving rubbish
on roads
Recently the city corporation has done a very good job by repairing the streets and constructing new drains and footpaths in the Mohammadpur area. The city corporation deserves appreciation for this.
But with much concern I have noticed that rubbish is still being heaped by the side of the roads. One more thing, whenever the city corporation cleans the sewerage lines, they leave the sewage just by the side of the manhole, which eventually spreads around the area and again finds its way into the manhole when it rains.
I would like to draw the attention of the city corporation to the above matters. At the same time, they should take appropriate measures to get their digging work done without cutting the underground cables, especially those of telephones.
Professor M Zahidul Haque
SAU, Dhaka
Poor purchasing power parity
Bangladesh is the nation most vulnerable to global climate change in the world, according to German Watch’s Global Climate Risk Index (CRI) of 2011. This is based on the analysis of impacts of major climate events that occurred around the world in the twenty-year period since 1990. The reasons are complex and extremely intertwined.
Located at the bottom of the mighty GBM river system (comprising the Padma, the Brahmaputra and the Meghna), Bangladesh is watered by a total of 57 trans-boundary rivers coming down to it, 54 rivers from neighbouring India and three from Myanmar.
The country, which has no control of the water flow and volume, drains to the Bay of Bengal over 90 pc of the total run-off generated annually. Coupled with the high level of widespread poverty and increasing population density, limited adaptive capacity and poorly funded, ineffective local governance have made the region one of the most adversely affected in the planet. There are an estimated one thousand people in each square kilometer, with the national population increasing by two million people each year.
Almost half the population is in poverty (Purchasing Power Parity of $1.25 per person a day). Hence these people do not have the ability to respond to a natural disaster. In this situation, the government has to take up comprehensive plan to save the people of the own country through negotiation and other measures.
A Citizen
Dhaka
