S.A Shofiee, Sylhet :
Beautification of Sylhet City, ahead of the ICC World T20, has finally started.
Sylhet City Corporation (SCC) has started to fix the fountains at many points of the city and decorating road dividers with lights and painting. The students of Shahjalal University in cooperation with locals voluntarily started to beautify the city road by painting. SCC has taken different plans to beautify the city ahead of T20 World Cup.
The plans include installations of thermo and radium thermo plastics on the city roads, road marking, paving blocks at respective turning and points, lighting the banks of Surma River at South Surma area, illuminating the North Surma area, street light installation around the whole city, erecting sculpture at Shah Eidgah and Kumarpara point in the city, floating boat lighting in Surma River, decorative lighting from Upashahar to Sylhet Divisional Stadium, road painting, establishing mascots and festoons of the world cup at different points in the city, welcoming boards from SCC on behalf of the dwellers of Sylhet etc.
Painting job in some specific roads and dividers, installation of lights and cleaning of the city has been completed, but detailed beautification is yet to be finished.
Acting Chief Engineer of SCC, Noor Azizur Rahman said, as the beautification is a long process, we are hopeful to complete most of the work by 17th March. Public Relations Officer of SCC, Moinuddin Monju told That ‘We are trying our best to beautify Sylhet as much as possible within the expected time.’
Though the city is being beautified ahead of this big event, city dwellers are not as happy as they would be due to the fact that tourism aspects of the region are not being highlighted by the authority. Sylhet boasts to have numerous tourist attractions which include tea gardens, waterfalls, tropical rain forests, presence of several tribal groups with their colorful culture, folklore etc. By representing these in the beautification programme would develop the tourism in this region.
But none including the Bangladesh Tourism Corporation has taken any steps as yet in this regard. Tourist attractions of Sylhet are totally neglected throughout the campaigns. ICC Match Referee Jeff Crowe, on his visit here declared Sylhet Stadium as the most beautiful stadium in South Asia. So, the people of Sylhet demand Bangladesh Tourism Board should take necessary steps to properly represent these aspects of the region during the international event.
SCC Mayor Ariful Haque Chowdhury said paintings with other works have started and will be finished in three days. Other plans are also being implemented in an emergency basis. He alleged, although the ministry allocated 5 crore Taka for the beautification, but only 3.25crore Taka has been disbursed so far. The amount is not enough to implement the plans taken by SCC to beautify the city which requires around 120crore implementing.
