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No air polluter will be spared: DNCC mayor

Staff Correspondent
A mobile court of Dhaka North City Corporation (DNCC) yesterday fined four contractors - including a DNCC contractor - Tk 80,000, for keeping construction materials on footpaths and polluting air at Niketan.
The mobile court, led by executive magistrates Md Abdul Hamid Miah and Mir Nahid Ahsan, also pulled down illegal billboards from road medians at Gulshan-1 and Gulshan-2.
"All development work will have to be done in a compliant manner, otherwise no one will be spared from punishment," said DNCC mayor Atiqul Islam while inaugurating the drive against air pollution at Niketan.
He said many people consider themselves "powerful enough" to do anything they wish, and do not follow rules. "They will have to understand that no one is more powerful than the government," he added.
It is not acceptable that anyone will come and set up billboards, festoons, banners on footpaths, medians or electric poles, the mayor said. There is a provision of taking permission from city corporation
before doing these, and anyone wishing to do so will have to follow the law, he said.
"We are only removing the illegal billboards this time, but we will take legal action against the offenders if anyone does it again," the mayor said.
Atiqul also distributed leaflets to locals to raise awareness about air pollution.
The drive comes at a time when residents of Dhaka city have been facing severe air pollution.
Since the beginning of winter, air pollution levels in Dhaka have turned severe mainly due to brick kilns, vehicles run on fuel with higher level of sulfur, road digging and construction work done without taking necessary steps to spray water, say experts.
Bangladesh, one of the most densely-populated countries in the world, has been struggling with air pollution for a long time. In the last year, Dhaka has regularly found its place among the most polluted cities in the world.
"At a country level, weighted by population, Bangladesh emerges as the most polluted country," said the 2018 World Air Quality Report released on March 5.International environmental organisations Greenpeace and AirVisual prepared the report, based on last year's data collected from public monitoring sources. According to the report, air pollution will cause around 7 million premature deaths globally next year, and has a major economic impact.