BNP secretary general and Local Government, Rural Development and Cooperatives Minister Mirza Fakhrul Islam Alamgir has said: “These days I myself feel that I will not live in Dhaka; I will go and live in some other city in my country. Because it no longer feels livable.” He spoke as chief guest at the launch of “Dakshiner Janala” (Window of the South), organised by Dhaka South City Corporation on Saturday.
Mirza Fakhrul said: “The oxygen you take the moment you step out of your house is polluted too. If you go to a government hospital, you cannot even get in. Every institution is heading toward destruction. If we cannot get out of that state and bring the institutions forward, then the dreams spoken of will remain only dreams. Because — can we really breathe that free air?” He said a movement is needed to ensure pollution-free oxygen and build livable cities so that people can live longer, expressing hope that such initiatives would stir city dwellers.
The BNP secretary general said it is not enough only to make citizens aware; those who make policy, run Dhaka and implement development plans must also be brought under accountability. “Project after project worth thousands of crores of taka is going on for this Dhaka city. But how much people benefit, how much citizens benefit — those things need to be assessed,” he said. He said the city corporation is a self-governing local-government institution, and that cities around the world are run through elected mayors and self-governing corporations, so such institutions need to work with deeper thought, patriotism and responsibility.
Raising the issue of Dhaka’s environment and river pollution, Mirza Fakhrul said: “In our college days we often went boating on the Buriganga. But now you cannot even go near that river — so polluted, so foul-smelling. It seems to me that the root of many of Dhaka’s problems is perhaps this Buriganga. The Buriganga’s water is in the state it is today, and the Shitalakshya is heading the same way. So where will Dhaka’s citizens go?” He said structural change is needed alongside ongoing initiatives, that planning must be done properly, and that a “project over, everything over” situation must be avoided. On Dhaka’s water, he said the matter had been discussed at a recent cabinet meeting: “Dhaka’s water situation is very dire. A large part of the water is not drinkable. Another big problem is that the groundwater level is dropping a thousand metres down. This is bringing a terrible danger for Dhaka.” He said effective steps must be taken to clean the rivers, lamenting that despite so many projects, no effective project to clean the Buriganga is made.
বাংলায় মূল প্রতিবেদন পড়ুন · Read the original Bengali report