The Chittagong city, which started its journey as a municipality 150 years ago, is still beset with typical problems of a newly formed town, with inadequate civic services and poor living conditions.
On the occasion of its sesquicentennial anniversary, residents of the city had more bitter memories to recall than fond ones.
At the core of their displeasure are problems that they deem “unbefitting” and “unacceptable” for the second-largest and decidedly the second-most important city in the country.
The problems range from unclean environment, waterlogging, potholed roads, poor communication and lack of a proper drainage system – to name a few.
“Before every election of the Chittagong City Corporation (CCC), mayoral and councillor candidates come with a slew of flowery promises, that they would do this and that if elected. But instead of improving, the situation is worsening every day,” said Sharif Chawhan, a development activist.
He said introduction of a well-planned drainage system remains a longstanding demand of the people, as well as digging out new canals and dredging old, earth-filled ones for a sustainable solution to the city’s acute waterlogging problem.
“But beyond the perfunctory lip-service of the city fathers, the people had seen no such initiatives in their living memory,” he added.
Tahmina Ferdousi, a lawyer at the district judges’ court, said Chittagong had a reputation of being clean even 10 years ago.
“Now, what you can see is city corners littered with trash and garbage bags, which is mainly due to the disorganised cleaning activities of CCC. It’s unacceptable and totally unbefitting for a modern city like ours,” she said.
She also said the city had turned into a haven for mosquitoes due to this lack of cleanliness and irregular anti-mosquito drives.
Jamal Uddin, an auto-rickshaw driver who hails from Chauddagram of Comilla, said some of the city’s streets are in a good shape, but many of them are so dilapidated that “they could be replaced by old dirt roads in the rural areas”.
“Often automobile accidents occur because of the sorry state of streets in the city. We sometimes have to face reproach from passengers for the bumpy rides caused by potholes,” he added.
Waterlogging and poor road conditions are two of the biggest challenges that every mayor of the city has had to face without exception.
M Manjur Alam, the present mayor of CCC, however, thinks the situation in service sectors has improved “significantly” during his term.
“The service standard of the corporation has been upgraded significantly in recent times, especially in health and education – the two perimeters in which we outstripped all other city corporations in the country.”
“At this moment, we are in the process of implementing three giant projects to permanently remove waterlogging from the face of the city,” he said, admitting, however, that the condition of roads somewhat deteriorated because of heavy downpour in the monsoon.
“But efforts are on to repair them soon enough,” he added.The mayor also said the rapid increase in population means there are now newer problems to face and newer demands to meet in Chittagong.
“The CCC is working to meet the demands and solve those problems with time-bound measures. People are also getting the benefits of these measures.” According to sources in CCC, the Chittagong municipal committee was formed on June 22, 1863 – 150 years from today.
The committee was later converted into a municipality and upgraded to Municipal Corporation in 1982. It became the Municipal City Corporation in 1990.
On Friday, the CCC initiated a three-day celebration, celebrating 150 years of its establishment.