Mayor of Dhaka north Annisul Huq has compared the capital city with an ICU patient and himself with its doctor.
“At present, the condition of Dhaka City is like a patient in a hospital ICU [intensive care unit]. The mayor is the doctor who has never studied medical science. But the patient must be saved. The patient is dying and all we are doing is research – this cannot happen.”
Annisul said this while addressing a roundtable in a city hotel yesterday where participants including ministers, engineers and police officials discussed short-, mid- and long-term solutions to Dhaka’s traffic congestion problem.
“To save Dhaka, some immediate steps must be taken. Around 40-50% of the problems must be reduced. Everyone talks about evicting hawkers from the footpaths. Free the roads from grabbers. But this is not easy. They [hawkers] have sat there [on the footpath] after paying people money. They have people with strong hands behind them,” Annisul said.
Dhaka south mayor Sayeed Khokon said traffic congestion and water stagnation are the two biggest problems facing Dhaka.
“We have regular discussions. Now we want to see some actions. We want to see some works done. Although reducing traffic congestion is DMP’s [Dhaka Metropolitan Police] duty, the city corporations want to lead that effort and play a role,” Khokon said in his speech.
During their election campaigns before the city corporation elections five months ago, both mayors have put in a lot of energy and time into publicising their plans to free the capital city of its biggest problems – traffic congestion and water stagnation.
One day last month, Dhaka experienced severe water stagnation and consequent traffic congestion following just an hour of heavy rain. Most of the major roads went under water and the result was hours long traffic tailbacks which brought the city to a standstill.
Both Annisul and Khokon faced severe criticism, especially in the social media, after people suffered immensely on that day.
Addressing Annisul, the roundtable’s chief guest Road Transport and Bridges Minister Obaidul Quader yesterday said: “Keeping so many eggs in one basket will not work. You should take small plans first and implement them. Free the roads. What everyone say sounds good. But there are no actions.”
Golam Farukh, additional commissioner of DMP, identified unplanned building and digging of roads, dilapidation, keeping roads and streets blocked for development and vehicles plying in the wrong way as the main reasons for them not being able to reduce traffic congestion.
Four documentaries were shown during the roundtable. Data presented in the documentaries showed that in 2013, only 6% of the people in Dhaka used personal transport but the cars they own occupy 80% of the roads.