Whenever a heavy downpour inundates the capital’s low-lying areas, it also brings forward an issue that is very familiar to Dhaka residents: utter chaos in traffic management.
Even though further heavy rain is expected during monsoon, the Dhaka Metropolitan Police are still without an effective plan to handle vehicular movement on inundated streets, where it is common for long tailbacks to occur.
Md Abdur Rahman, deputy director at the Met Office’s climate division, said spells of rain is likely to resume in the city from after July 2.
While the DMP blames Dhaka Wasa for failing to solve the problem, the Water Supply and Sewerage Authority says the responsibility of preventing water stagnation also fell on the shoulders of the city corporations and Rajuk.
DMP traffic (South) Joint Commissioner Musleh Uddin Ahmed said Wasa was responsible for the water stagnation and it was their duty to resolve the matter.
As there was not enough streets available in Dhaka city, the DMP forces are unable to arrange alternative routes that would divert the traffic away from inundated streets, he added.
Police sources, however, said they had no specific list of the streets that were easily inundated during rain.
Moderate spells of rain usually inundates low-lying areas such as Mirpur, Mohammadpur, Malibagh, Shantinagar, Motijheel, and Jurain. The water on the streets is almost always accompanied by a traffic jam and additional woes for those without any transport.
Even though the police blame the Wasa, the sewerage authorities themselves struggle with different limitations.
Several Wasa officials, on condition of anonymity, said Wasa’s drainage system needed to be expanded by at least 40% in order to make it capable of handling the excess rainwater.
Dhaka Wasa Managing Director Taqseem A Khan said they could not be blamed solely for the water stagnation situation as the Wasa only maintained one-third of the city’s sewerage system.
Joint efforts by Wasa, the city corporations in Dhaka, and Rajdhani Unnayan Kartripakkha were going on to solve the water stagnation crisis, he added.
Despite repeated efforts, DNCC Chief Engineer Gazi Firoz and DSCC Chief Engineer Md Habibur Rahman could not reached over the phone for comments.