The government has decided to pass the responsibility of drainage system management to remove rainwater and solve the waterlogging problem in Dhaka onto the city corporations from Dhaka Water and Sewerage Authority or WASA.
It has formed a technical committee to determine the handover process with Muhammad Ibrahim, additional secretary to the local government ministry, as its convener and Deputy Secretary Md Saidur Rahman as member secretary.
LGRD Minister Tajul Islam shared the information on Thursday following a meeting on putting the city corporations in charge of the canals in a bid to address the waterlogging problem in Dhaka, reports bdnews24.com.
The technical committee will include eight representatives, four from the city corporations and as many from the WASA.
The handover process will begin after the technical committee submits their report in one month.
Earlier, the city corporation had been responsible for the management, cleaning and maintenance of the drainage system and canals as per the law.
But the responsibility was shifted to Dhaka WASA following a presidential order and it had been doing the job until now.
Both the mayors in city corporations are keen to work for the benefit of the people and they will be able to perform this task, the minister said.
Waterlogging in the capital's Mirpur after heavy overnight rain disrupts traffic on Monday.WASA will still be responsible for overseeing the water supply and sewerage system in the city, the local government minister said.
They have reached a consensus on the issue, he said.
“It is an important day for us. The meeting was called to make this historic decision,” Dhaka North City Mayor Atiqul Islam said.
“We have reached an agreement to implement what we envisioned. There are many technical issues here. We want to end the sufferings of people caused by the waterlogging in the city and therefore, reached a consensus in the meeting,” he said.
They will try their best to recover the illegally encroached canals to protect the residents from waterlogging, the mayor said.
The 60-foot wide Kalshi canal shrank to 5 feet due to encroachment, he pointed out.
“It is not expected by anyone. Encroachers have grabbed both sides of the canal. The authorities will recover it and give it a facelift with a walkway and cycle lane along it.”
It was a timely decision to end the long-pending problem, said Dhaka South City Mayor Sheikh Fazle Noor Taposh.
