Dhaka fit for underground traffic

Speakers at a seminar in the city on Friday said that the land of Dhaka is fit for under ground movement of traffic. The authority should look for the under ground transportation to smooth traffic system.

The seminar organized jointly by Bangladesh Institute of Planners and the Department of Urban and Regional Planning (URP) under Bangladesh University of Engineering Technology (BUET). Minister for Communication Nazmul Huada was present as chief guest while chairman of URP professor Golam Rahman chaired the seminar.

Professor Mir Maksud Ali of Illinois of University of USA presented keynote paper while he said that considering the traffic jam situation in Dhaka subway system would be effective.

How do food inspections help us?

I just read Sohel Islam's piece on adulterated foods in yesterday's paper (July 2). I was relieved to learn that food in Dhaka is actually subject to DCC inspection! Unfortunately, we consumers usually have no way of knowing which places to avoid, so these inspections ultimately don't help us. On reading about the test of samples from sweet shops, for instance, I would have loved to know which two sweet shops in the city came out "clean." Could Mr. Islam not have included that piece of information in the article just as he did the information about the sauce and jamjelly test (or as Star City did the list of eight BSTI-recalled products on the following page)?

Let me share with you two examples from the States to give you a sense of what I have in mind: All restaurants in the city of Los Angeles are required to post a letter grade by their front door,

a grade given to each restaurant on the basis of cleanliness, etc. I know this is not going to be feasible in Dhaka right now. My other example is from Houston, where on a weekly spot in the local news, a man named Marvin Zindler ‘names’ restaurants that have done well on city inspections and those that have NOT. This I think is a very valuable public service and perhaps Star City could work out some arrangement with the inspectors over at DCC to share this information with us. Surely the dread of ending up on the infamous Daily Star blacklist would encourage food establishments and manufacturers to clean up their acts, literally. Given the famous Bengali sweet tooth, sweet shops strike me as a very good place to start.

Just an idea!

Sincerely,

Elora Shehabuddin

Dhaka