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DCC rents out playground keeping mayor in dark

Tawfique Ali
Dhaka City Corporation (DCC) continues to rent out playfields for commercial use despite government direction and public outcry against such use.
The corporation rented out the playground of Gulshan Central Park to Women's Voluntary Association (WVA) for two days in end-November for holdingafair.
But DCC Mayor Sadeque Hossain Khoka said, "I have not approved any lease of the playground at Gulshan Central Park for any fair recently. 1 am not even aware of it.”
Khoka said he even declined to allow students of two departments of Dhaka University to hold a fund-raising programme for their ailing fellow students recently.
According to the DCC Estate Department records, the playground was rented out to WVA on September 14to hold thefaironNovember 28-29.
Asked, DCC Chief Estate Officer Md Khalilur Rahman said they did not rent out the playground at Gulshan Central Park recently for commercial use.
"If approved, it was done long back,” he said.
DCC rented out the playground for a wedding ceremony on December 26, 2007 and for a fair of handicrafts on December 1 the same year.
The field remained occupied with similar functions throughout January 2008.
MA Mutalib, office supervisor of WVA, said only the president of the
association could say how and when they took rent of the playground. But WVA President Anisa Haq asked this correspondent to know it from the DCC.
The National Sports Council (NSC) in November 2007 formally requested all agencies concerned not to use playgrounds for commercial purposes other than games and sports.
Hamida Begum, assistant director of NSC, said many organisations requested them to protect the city's fields as playgrounds and prevent any commercial uses of them for holding concerts, fair and wedding ceremonies.
“So, we wrote to the agencies concerned requesting them not to use playgrounds for other purposes than games and sports," she said.
But the city managers are renting out one playground or the other allowing commercial events like fair, musical concerts and wedding ceremonies in exchange of money, denying the locals of their right to have open space.
Shirin Shila, joint general secretary of Gulshan Society, said life and movement of the residents become miserable when such functions take place at the playground.
"It is needless to explain how annoying an event like a fair or a music concert taking place in a residential area," she said. "Residents in the immediate vicinity of the venue cannot even stay inside their houses because of noise and loud sound."
Movement in the area gets difficult due to traffic jam caused by huge gathering. Traffic on all the surrounding
roads comes to a standstill with enormous traffic loads.
"We have talked enough of it and complained a lot with the authorities concerned but there has been no difference so far,” said a frustrated Shirin. “I am extremely frustrated with the situation as the neighbourhood has alreadybecome unliveable."
According to Prof Serajul Islam Choudhury, a noted social analyst and head of a high-level advisory7 committee of DCC's park development and beautification, wasteful use of the playgrounds is just unacceptable.
Games and sports are essential for a healthy social life, said Prof Choudhury, adding that absence of sports facilities is responsible for artificiality, frustration and addiction in today's society.
DCC earnsTk 23,334 per day renting out the Gulshan Central Park playground.
Though custodian of the city7's parks and playgrounds, DCC has always been insensitive to abuses of public spaces, city residents alleged.
A playground gets damaged as a result of installation of makeshift structures for commercial purposes.
Renting out a playground for otherwise uses goes against the spirit of a High Court order on 24 April 2004, said environmentalists.
The court directed DCC authorities to maintain Dhanmondi playground as a playground in the light of playground, open space and wetland protection act of 2000.