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Can't we check the decline of Dhaka city?

Md. Asadullah Khan
***BittertrutH
With most of the footpaths blocked by street hawkers, vendors and road side shop owners and half of the main road in most places blocked by cars and other vehicles through illegal parking and rickshaws and vans blocking traffic movement at intersections, a ride or even a walk on the city roads is something impossible and it has added to citizen's woes. This is possibly a fitting example how this city has reached a point of stagnation and near-coIlapse.***
ILL-conceived policies of the past that still continue have created nightmarish conditions in our cities. Worst affected is the Dhaka city that grapples with oversized population, scanty land space compared to heavy exodus from rural outbacks, noxious emissions and toxic effluents from big and small factories coupled with recurrent thrust of natural disasters like flood, and storms. Compounding the crisis resulting from the deterioration of physical environment is the unceasing wave of terrorism, violence and crime committed in the streets even in broad day light because of lax governance and weak policing.
After a series of such daredevil acts of robbery, murder and lynching in the past one week in the morning of June 11 again the citizenry glanced the news report that two businessmen in older part of the city were hacked to death, presumably in consequence of *■■■■■■■■■■■■■■■1
business feud, when three alleged criminals including robbers and a leader of the outlawed Sarbahara parry were killed in 'shootouts' in encounters with law enforcers in different parts of the country. People are wary and the nagging thought that overwhelms them is: if the livability of the city will continue to be at stake in all aspects with each passing day?
True, the maladies that affect either the premier capital city or other cities and even the countryside with regard to deterioration of physical environment are not merely localized wounds that can be cleaned, disinfected and healed : they have deep roots. Basically the problem stems from lack of vision, coordinated planning and a clear mindset. One can't lose sight of the fact that from the beginning RAJUK and DCC, the two city development and utility organizations of Dhaka have come up with shortsighted planning and ad-hoc solutions. The result today has been disastrous.These two powerful development authorities in city planning have forgotten the fact
that cities shape civilization and cultural roots and urban discipline can only tfike roots when there is organized civic life.
The picture of this fast growing city is grim. Conscious citizenry express deep concern about the environmental degradation that evidently manifests its decline. There is no sanitation worth the name for 70 per cent of the urban population. WASA sources say that every day the city dwellers generate around 3.6 lakh cubic metres of excreta, a major portion of which goes directly to the rivers, lakes and other water bodies around the city. Individual toilet facilities are available to only about 30 per cent. With only 59,310 buildings out of five lakh in the city coming under the sewerage discharge connection, as the WASA sources say, and the Pagla sewerage treatment plant having a capacity of treating only 1,20,000 cubic metres of sewage per day, unquestionably, the sewerage system is abysmal.
Speaking about the Dhaka city, experts in the country have expressed concern that encroach-
ment on the river Buriganga, the life line of this 400-year-old city, traffic congestion, pollution and diseases are turning this once serene city into a teeming choking hell. True, the river Buriganga has turned into a narrow polluted canal due to encroachment on both its sides and indiscriminate disposed of waste and effluent in it. Reports have it that the river and adjacent wetlands receive an estimated 80 lakh metric tons of waste water including excreta and industrial waste, domestic sewage and effluents per day through various points like the Hazaribagh tannery, Dolaikhal and Pagla sewage treatmentplant.
Shockingly true, the Buriganga has turned out to be the most polluted river in the country with Hazaribagh tannery causing the major pollution. The present dissolved oxygen level (BOD) is much lower than four milligram per litre, the minimum dissolved oxygen required for survival of fish and other aquatic lives. Precisely true, Buriganga's poisoned waters now symbolize not life but death.
In Narayanganj, the sister town 30kms off Dhaka, the river Shitalakhya receives effluents from textile and dyeing industries located at Kachpur and Tarabo area. Waste water to the extent of 4 billion cusecs everyday is being thrown into Shitalakhya. These places are a living hell, a fitting example of how human beings are forced to live in squalid conditions.
Even in non-industrialised countries like Bangladesh where pollution through burning of fossil fuel has not reached such a menacing level, auto-emission like carbon monoxide and sulphur dioxide, trash boom including polythene bags and plastic containers have created an environmental crisis with an air pollution emergency of unprecedented severity. The hope and sense of purpose that occasionally prompted the governments in the past days, sometimes just as a political slogan and voteseekingdevice, evaporated within days as usual.
In fact the air pollution problem in Dhaka has probably prompted it to be one of the most polluted cities
in the world. The report published by the World Bank sponsored organizations revealed that the air pollution level in Dhaka was often 5-10 times higher than the recommended WHO guidelines for suspended particulate matter (dust), sulphur dioxide and airborne lead.
On the basis of the reports released and other data that are most apparent, people living in Dhaka city are being subjected to slow murder because of the pollution that soar many times over the safe levels. Air pollution is comparatively the new monster. And the device here is the country's vehicle population of all varieties like buses, trucks, cabs, private cars and three wheelers that has increased ten fold since 1990, a direct result of the failure of mass transport. The unrestrained, and often illegal spread of urban industries, most without pollution control devices of any kind also poison the air. Over and above gridlocked city streets with worn out vehicles push up emissions drastically forcing the road users to suffer without mitigation.
Laws exist to book a polluter but law enforcers by themselves shy away from using the laws in most cases may be because of any unholy alliance with the vehicle drivers. In most cases polluting vehicles drive away emitting noxious brown fumes in the presence of the law enforcement personnel without being held or booked even in these days of Emergency Rule.
Garbage has posed a major threat
to health and sanitation in and around the city limits. In most cases it is not picked up for days and even months. In the teeming city suburbs filthy water and human excreta along with other wastes stagnate in choked drains throughout the year till the rainy season washes part of them out to the river Buriganga or other nearby canals. City's garbage collection points, some of them provided with steel frame bins by the DCC years ago but now totally worn out and unusable, are nothing more than rotting, open heaps of refuse. The sight of the wholesale markets and Kucha bazar in different areas of the city and residential areas in the older part and even in some posh new areas presents a filthy look with garbage spilling over the road and reeking of horrible stench.
Undeniably true, Dhaka is symbolic of the ills that usually plague a growing dirty city and a realization must be dawning on all of us, especially the present CTG that that this city, once so serene and majestic, is collapsing under the mountains of garbage and seas of sewage. With glitzy malls and shiny high rise apartment buildings shooting up in different parts of the city, no body would deny that a section of the populace in the country, and a sizable proportion of them living in the Dhaka city has prospered. But as society prospers, its trash --mainly hazardous plastics, metals and other packaging — is growing exponentially. In the last five years garbage was produced at nearly
twice the rate of population growth. As an official figure reveals, about 17,000 metric tons of garbage is produced daily in areas under four metropolitan civic bodies and more than half of it is produced in Dhaka.
With most of the footpaths blocked by street hawkers, vendors and road side shop owners and half of the main road in most places blocked by cars and other vehicles through illegal parking and rickshaws and vans blocking traffic movement at intersections, a.ride or even a walk on the city roads is something impossible and it has added to citizen’s woes. This is possibly a fitting example how this city has reached a point of stagnation and near-collapse.
Shockingly true, terrorism, violence and mindless murders on one side and destruction of the physical environment by human induced actions on the other have all played a part in turning this historic city, into a choking hell now. But public reaction to all these human factors is most mute. And surely, unless the public takes a unanimous stand, Dhaka’s decline will continue. If people showed their outrage all together at what is going on here, it might galvanize the politicians, bureaucrats and the government that would be coming to power through people's mandate in the coming days into real action.
Md. Asad u ah Khan is a former teacher of physics and Controller of Exam inabons. SUET