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Download PDF With every canal, pond and low-lying area being filled up by uncollected rubbish generated by more than a million people living in Dhaka-Narayanganj-Demra (DND) area, the severe consequences of unplanned urbanisation is beginning to show with permanent waste water logging and unhealthy living condition.
Officials of Narayanganj and Dhaka district administrations, Dhaka City Corporation (DCC) and Narayanganj Municipality said it is not their responsibility to dispose of wastes from the DND area.
“In our record, the DND area had a 45-kilometre long canal network crisscrossing it and ensuring a healthy natural drainage system, but now nothing is left,” said a drainage expert of Dhaka Wasa requesting anonymity.
Thousands of tons of industrial and household waste generated in the fast-growing 57 square kilometres of the DND area are dumped into ponds, canals and low-lying areas. Wasa and Water Development Board engineers working in the area warned that the area would face a permanent problem of water logging as soon as all its plots are developed. Over 25 percent of the area has been developed without any proper plan whatsoever, according to Rajuk sources.
When five years ago Rajuk tried to introduce a plan as per its Dhaka Metropolitan Development Plan (Master Plan), it was forced to back off before a stiff resistance from hundreds of thousands of private landowners, who had bought all sizes of plots in the area. The area has ever since grown without any ‘parents’, where hundreds of residential buildings and small workshops have been built for low income people. The mess related to land allocations in the DND area becomes clear with the addresses of the plots on which buildings have been built. For instance, near Shonir Akhra, this correspondent found a house with a number 12/1/2/A (Ka) and the next door number was 135/A (Ka).
Experts in city waste water drainage system said the area has one water retention point with a pump house at Shimrail area to jettison all the waste water generated inside the area heavily fortified with dykes against flooding by the River Buriganga. The retention pond was originally created to hold rainwater for irrigation in the mid sixties when the DND area was earmarked as a farming area to provide fresh vegetables for the city.
The old pump has a capacity of jetting out 14.5 cubic metres of water per second out of the protected area, but unplanned growth of the area has been so rapid that nowadays waste water generated in parts of the area cannot roll on to the retention pond, creating pockets of water logging.
According to officials, one of the biggest blows to the area came with the construction of Jatrabari-Kanchpur Road and Narayanganj Diversion Road, which instantly created three sub-divisions within the DND area, cutting off drainage in one third of the area.
The Water Development Board (WDB) has now proposed to immediately restore some drainage system by recovering the canals and by setting up a pump with a capacity of jetting out 50 cubic metres of water a second.
“Each of the canals has been filled with rubbish, and roads have been paved on natural canals vital for draining water up to the pump’s retention point,” said an engineer.
The engineer however said there is still time to recover the canals as there are not that many concrete structures on those lands yet.
In 2004, heavy rainfall caused unprecedented water logging in the DND area that lasted for over 24 days with local people, Wasa officials and the army personnel working frantically day and night to pump out the water. The rise in the level of water in the river nearby also threatened to breach the dyke, as thousands of people worked day and night to protect the dyke and avert a catastrophe.
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