The New Nation - Internet Edition

We the residents at Gulshan 1 [Road # 29] have tried many times to tell the authorities how five business houses are creating immense security problems for the entire neighbourhood. We don't know who gave these business houses permission to operate in a residential neighbourhood. There's a garment factory belonging to Palmal Group just in front of the house that I live in. On the right, there are two manpower offices. On my southeast, a private university has settled in. And behind mine, there's another manpower office.

The garment factory has about 20 vehicles of different sizes. These vehicles occupy all the roads coming to my residence all day and all night. Most of the time our own cars don't have passage to enter our own building. When we tell them about their unruly parking of their cars, they, the drivers of the garment factory, become aggressive and act rowdy. The parking space of this garment factory is occupied with a Hammar and a Mercedes Benz SUV.

A crowd of 15 to 20 officials of this garment factory is always on the road, either smoking or chatting. Mobile tea and cigarette sellers come here to sell their commodities to these officials.

An army of 50 to 60 people are perennially present on the road because of the three manpower-recruiting centres.

Quite often the university authority organises open-air concerts that continue till midnight. When they do this, it becomes impossible for us to stay in the house. These concerts create problems for not only the families living in our building, but everyone in the neighbourhood. When we request them to stop their drums and music, they say they had taken permission from the police station to stage the concert. We went to the police station and the law enforcers said no one had taken any permission from them and the police are not the authority to allow those concerts, the community is.

We went to the city corporation and submitted an application. Still no one did anything about it. We have also spoken to the Gulshan Society, but with no result. We appeal to the authority, if anyone is at all engaged, to help us. At the same time, we appeal to the government to take all sorts of business houses away from the residential areas of Dhaka.

A Sufferer

Gulshan-1,

Dhaka