The New Nation - Internet Edition

Sheikh Arif Bulbon

People living inside the Dhaka-Narayanganj-Demra (DND) embankment will not get any respite from water logging this monsoon as no effective measures have been taken yet for a proper drainage system in the area due to non-completion of the Detailed Area Plan (DAP) of Dhaka city.

Tapan Kumar Nath, Project Director of DAP, said, "We have suspended all kinds of development activities, including improvement of drainage. No new projects for the area will be approved until and unless the detailed area plan is completed."

The deadline for finalising the DAP, which is to outline a proper housing and drainage plan for the capital including the 14,500-acre DND area inhabited by about 20-25 lakh people, has been extended for the fourth time by six months. The new time limit of the DAP project, undertaken in August 2004 with a 2-year time frame, has been set to December 31.

Prof Nazrul Islam, an urban expert, said, "As DAP includes an extensive and proper drainage planning for the entire Dhaka city, no new drainage plan for the DND area is being taken.

The DAP should have been completed much earlier, he opined.

The authorities should take immediate steps to excavate canals in the area before the rainy season sets in to avert recurrence of water logging, he stressed.

Architect Iqbal Habib, Member Secretary of the Urbanisation and Governance Committee of Bangladesh Poribesh Andolon (BAPA), said, "The people in the area will suffer like the previous years for water logging, as the authorities did not take any steps to develop the drainage system of the area."

As unplanned urbanisation is going on unabated in the area, it will hinder flush out of water aggravating water stagnation situation for this year, he noted.

Although a drive to demolish illegal structures along the DND dam was carried out last year to ensure the flow of stagnant water to the pump station situated at Shimrail point, there are three more pump stations where water cannot flow due to the unplanned urbanisation, according to him.

The DND dam was constructed between 1962 and 1968 as an irrigation project to make the land cultivable for three harvests a year. Of the total land under the DND project area, dwelling houses have already been constructed in 85 per cent of the land, according to the Bangladesh Water Development Board (BWDB).

Apart from unplanned urbanisation, encroachment on canals and dumping of solid waste in it, construction of cross-dams and culverts, inadequate pumps, lack of retention points and coordination among the agencies like BWDB, Water Supply and Sewerage Authority (WASA) and the Dhaka City Corporation (DCC) are among the major reasons for water logging in the area during the rainy season every year, experts said.