Life paralysed, business activities halted
Kazi Zahidul Hasan :
Heavy monsoon rain for the last few days paralysed life and business activities in the capital Dhaka and surrounding areas, inundating roads, lanes, by-lanes and slums confining people to their homes.
The heavy rainfall that started on Monday morning submerged many streets and low-lying areas in the city causing untold sufferings especially to office-goers and students on Saturday.
Students did not turn up at their respective institutions, while many office-goers, traders, workers fell behind their daily schedules due to the incessant rainfall.
Shantinagar, Khilgaon, Bashabo, Malibagh, Shantibagh, Rajarbagh, Mughdah, Mohammadpur, Mirpur, Badda and different parts of Old Dhaka are among the areas that experience the worst of water-logging.
Activities at the business district of Motijheel suffered badly as most roads went under ankle-to-knee deep water on Saturday.
The rainfall over last few days was recorded by 207 millimeters (mm) in Dhaka.
However, the downpour exposed the Dhaka WASA’s helplessness in solving water-logging problem and pitiable conditions of the city’s drainage system.
Experts say that Dhaka WASA (Water Supply and Sewerage Authority) spent crores of taka for modernizing the drainage system in the last several years, but the city residents are yet not getting the benefits of the expenditure.
They said that the Dhaka WASA took up two projects involving Tk 252 crore to improve the city’s drainage systems. These projects were said to be completed by 2014.
“But the city residents did not get any benefit from these projects as the water-logging problem remains as usual without any improvement in sight”, they added.
The two city mayors in an interview with the New Nation also blamed WASA’s defective planning for the continual water-logging problem.
“Heavy rainfall has caused water-logging and paralysed city life and a poor drainage system only worsened the situation,” said Annisul Huq, mayor of Dhaka North City Corporation (DNCC).
He added: Dhaka WASA is mainly responsible for the water-logging. Lack of coordination among the service providers is aggravating the water-logging situation.
Syeed Khokon, mayor of Dhaka South City Corporation (DSCC), echoed Huq’s view and said rainwater stagnation was increasing due to scanty storm drainage system and indiscriminate urbanisation.
“WASA is mainly responsible to manage the city’s water-logging problem and improve its drainage system. But, it has yet to come up with proper planning to improve the years old problem,” he added.
Khokon mentioned that both the city corporation are working together to improve the situation. “But our efforts will prove futile if all the services providers, including WASA are not work together under an umbrella,” he noted.
Officials said, both the city corporations maintained over 2,000km feeder drains to drain water from homes and rainwater and take them to canals and wide diameter (WASA) storm sewer system.
They also said that although the Dhaka master plan area is 1,528 square kilometer, only just a third of the 360-square kilometre WASA service area is covered by storm-water drainage system.
“Since population density is very high in the capital with a poor drainage capacity, rainwater takes hours to recede,” an official of DSCC told The New Nation yesterday.
According to him, a rainfall above 40mm in Dhaka is taking at least three hours to recede as the available system is capable of draining water of only 20mm of rainfall without causing too much public suffering.
Brushing aside the blame, Taqsem A Khan, Managing Director of Dhaka WASA, said, “Filling up of floodplains, water retention areas, wetlands, most of the 65 canals and indiscriminate urbanisation in Dhaka was the main reason for water-logging”.
He said that open space and water bodies help evaporate a third of the rainwater, percolate another third while leaving the rest to run down to retention areas. But in the absence of those, water gets stuck on the city roads and takes hours to recede even after a light rain.
“WASA has a storm-water drainage system master plan for the capital which is under implementation,” he said, adding, “I hope the situation will improve after implementation of the plan”.
Giving up blame game, he urged all concerned to provide a joint effort to solve the problem.
He also asked the city corporation authorities to ensure that before monsoon their roadside drains are clear, including the water catch pit of storm-water drains.
Met Department recorded 207 millimeters rainfall in the capital since Monday.
