Capital’s two mayoral offices must be serious about the city’s parks

Parks in the capital are not remaining what they should be. They have become dens of underground activities like drug abuse and sex trade as well as encroachment and pollution. As a result, the people of this sprawling mega city are finding it increasingly hard to spend time in open space in nature with trees, birds and other natural creatures and objects that can bring relief to mind in the hustle and bustle of city life.
In this winter season, dust in the surface atmosphere has become a serious health problem for people of all ages. Children are the most vulnerable section of the population to air and noise pollution, but the two city corporation authorities or the government in general for that matter is hardly worried about this danger.
The two city corporations authorities are failing to create a healthy environment in the capital by reducing air and noise pollution on the one hand, and they are not being able to protect the remaining playgrounds for children and parks for family-friendly space for recreation.
A daily newspaper yesterday painted a dismaying picture of Sheikh Russell Park at Jatrabari intersection. According to the daily, the park was renovated for four years spending taxpayers’ money starting in 2017, but within one year the park got ruined after the DSCC Mayor Sheikh Fazle Noor Tapash inaugurated it in 2021.
Soon after its opening, the park has gone under the control of drug peddlers and criminal gangs. Extremely polluted, the place has also become a target of encroachment and pollution. Undoubtedly, this all is happening due to the neglect of the DSCC authorities. Terribly, as there is no public toilet in the area, the park is also being used for the natural work of human beings that is creating an unsavory stench around the place. This state of the park has been further compounded by hawkers who by their makeshift shops are selling tea, fruits and shoes.
Can this Sheikh Russell Park at Jatrabari be called a park? Not at all. Even more sadly, this condition is not unique to this park alone. Most parks in the capital are, more or less, in this sorry state, primarily due to the neglect shown to them. Though residents of Dhaka are generally not serious about their civic duty, the fact is if the two mayoral offices would have been more serious and stricter, parks in the capital can be called parks in the real sense of the term.