Beruflich Dokumente
Kultur Dokumente
Eng105, Section 7
Beauty is in the eyes of beholder. So the city dwellers cannot enjoy the beauty with
having problems up-to their neck. Dhaka, the capital of Bangladesh, consists 11 million
inhabitants who live, strive and struggle to lead a life here. But the most basic rights are
unavailable to the most of the inhabitants of this capital city. There are many problems in this
city and these problems have reached at their peak. At the same time the government took an
People used to call Dhaka the city of mosques. But if the mayor has his way, theyll
soon be calling it the beautified city! (Sadique). But mostly the glamour of this
beautification was due to SAARC summit. It was not a real attempt to make the city
beautiful. The effort of decorating the outer-look ignoring all the problems created a question.
Beautification of Dhaka city is required but the basic problems like traffic jam, power
SAARC (South Asian Association for Regional Cooperation) summit was the main
reason behind the beautification. The government of Bangladesh made the effort to finish this
beautification program before the summit had begun. We know that our Dhaka is highly
polluted and populated, and it is a city of problems. These could have given an odd view to
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our honorable foreign guests. So the government tried to create a dazzling appearance of the
The government coordinated this whole process with the help of both private sectors
and government agencies. The government was not the main source of fund. Different
organizations were outsourced to do the job with their own money. Dhaka City Corporation
(DCC) was the coordinator and there were 73 organizations behind this project. A cell has
been formed (Dhaka City Beautification Cell) consisting members from DCC, DESA,
WASA, Police etc. to look after the project. The mayor Sadeque Hossain Khoka is the head of
this cell.
The beautification cell divided the city into 109 zones depending on the length of the
roads. There were also two parks to redecorate under this program. Different organizations
had been appointed for different parts. The main workings had started in the month of
June04. Those agencies are also responsible to maintain their parts. The 73 organizations
and institutions which have been allotted 109 different sections of roads and street
intersections for beautification will be continuing the work and maintaining those till Match
2008 (Alam). They can place only three advertisements in their parts.
DCC planned to decorate roads, medians, pavements, islands and roundabouts. The
total plan was to deck out the capital before the SAARC summit had begun. The
beautification program included decorating the landscape with grass, trees, and ornamental
things and making fountains, steel sculptures etc. They tried to make better sidewalks,
illuminate the city with different kinds of lightings. But the fact is there was no additional
approach to work out the previously existing problems, which might affect the image of the
city.
To have the proper idea of the city, we should take a glimpse of the real conditions
that exists. Dhaka is the largest city and the capital of Bangladesh. It has a population of 11
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million. The density of population of Dhaka is 225 (approx.) persons per hectare, which
means it is the most densely populated city in the world. Most of the inhabitants of Dhaka are
living below the poverty line and they do not have proper dwellings. But Dhaka is the most
important region as the capital city of Bangladesh. The city is important for the political
The governments view was that they would represent the city as a beautiful city to
the SAARC guests. Though it was a costly job, the sight of those beautiful plants and flowers
are refreshing change to the people. The government thinks that the beautification program
has made some parts of Dhaka city really beautiful such as the Airport Road, Bijoy Sharani,
Now comes the most vital factor, money. The project required a lot of money and its
maintenance cost was also high. This beautification project was too expensive for a country
like Bangladesh even though private companies paid the bills. Also, the beautification project
was not friendly to the people as it created some hazards in the daily life. There is no doubt,
Dhaka city needed to be beautiful, as the city dwellers were becoming frustrated and
disturbed about the rapid and unplanned growth of Dhaka, where no place was left to be
refreshed or relaxed. For this, the DCBC project should not be only visual stimuli. People
should get the chance to enjoy and feel the beauty. People cannot enjoy the beauty while
being stuck in the traffic jam. The designers had not provided any arrangement for the
Beautification of the Dhaka city- it sounds that this program would make the Dhaka
city beautiful. For sure a beautiful, clean and harmonious Dhaka city is the dream of all its
dwellers. But this approach was only focused on the main roads of Dhaka. There was no
attempt to remove the open dustbins from the middle of the roads, clean the lanes, lakes,
dams or parks or to improve the conditions of slums to beautify the city. Rather all the
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attempts of beautification were taken based on only those main roads through which visitors
Again, in some places this program stopped working beforehand though the operation
was not completely done. And also, due to lack of maintenance many parts of beautification
already have started to lose its beauty. So, if we observe the circumstances, it is clear that the
project will fail to hold on the beauty of Dhaka for four years. The effect of beautification
Actually the government, who is the host of this gardening (that has been taking place
in the city) fails to provide shelter to all of its inhabitants and has no bearing on the real
issues. There are about 3000 slums in the Dhaka city and 30% of the total population of
Dhaka city lives in those slums. Surely, the number of people living in slums will increase
significantly in near future. Our government fails to provide most basic and fundamental
requirements of life to the present slum dwellers. Slum life goes on without any proper water
supply, housing, sanitation etc. I heard that in some of the slums one has to pay one taka to
get a bucket of water from a water outlet. One taka for a bucket of water is expensive
considering that municipality charges four and half taka for one thousand liters of water. The
women and the children had to wait for hours to collect a pitcher of water for drinking
purpose only. In the slums there is no proper sanitation system. Most of the slums have some
community toilets but these basic latrines are concrete rings set in the ground without any
water or flushing facilities and drain into an open gutter, which in turn is linked to a nearby
pond. This inefficient system of sanitation makes the areas unhealthy and they reek of with
garbage and human waste. People of slums usually need to wait long to use the toilets each
morning and if they cannot make it on time, they defecate in the gutters outside their homes.
The city did not assign anyone the responsibility of cleaning or maintaining these toilets of
slums (Bangladesh). For this the sanitation condition is getting worse rapidly. To solve this
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problem the government tries to remove the slums without providing those people some place
of living.
predominantly road based (Karim). The intolerable traffic congestion of Dhaka city has
become an everyday certainty and a nightmare for the city dwellers. Traffic jam poses severe
occasioned by traffic congestion is nearly one hundred million. Since Dhaka city has large
share of the total vehicles of the whole country, we can say that most of these jamming occurs
in Dhaka. And now, everyday the number of vehicles is increasing and the wastage is
becoming definitely higher. On the other hand the roads are not increasing.
Now a days, there is a water crisis in every season in Dhaka city. As dry season gets
closer, water crisis increases. The demand of water for more than one crore people in Dhaka
city is about more than two hundred crore liters a day. But Dhaka WASA can produce around
one-sixty crore liters per day. It means that the shortage is more than fifty crore liters per day.
Every year during dry season water crisis takes a terrible turn in Dhaka city for different
reasons such as electric supply shortage, frequent power outage, low voltage of power and
Then power crisis or the load shedding or the insufficient supply of gas is a day-to-
day phenomenon to the city dwellers of Dhaka. Residents of different areas under DESA
system have to face power outage for several hours in two or three spells. The effect of load
shedding is very adverse. City life becomes stand still. At present the demand for electricity
in the areas under the jurisdiction of the Dhaka Electric Supply Authority (DESA) is about
1,150 mw daily. But, according to official sources, the consumers are getting only 1,100 to
1,120 mw. The daily short fall of 30 to 50 mw is distributed among different zones of the
DESA through load shedding and low voltage power supply (Ahad). This rapid disturbance
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in power supply is not only for power shortage, but also due to technical faults in the
transmission and the distribution system which making the city life miserable. Again, the
amount of gas is not sufficient, which is now being produced at the existing gas fields across
Again I have to say that the government is decorating our city with cosmetic products.
On the other hand they fail to properly regulate the citys cleaning system. There are open
dustbins and accumulated garbage in the middle of the roads of Dhaka city even after the
beautification program has been completed. The Dhaka City Corporation has failed to remove
those as the city cleaning business has a shortage of cleaners. The DCC cannot collect the full
amount of the tons of waste. There are shortage of funds and cannot employ more workers.
Drainage or sewerage system are to help the city to avoid any situation like water logging by
draining out the excess water in case of overflow or nonstop raining. But whenever there is
heavy rain, the whole Dhaka city flooded, as the drainage system is not capable of draining
out quickly the aggregated rainwater. It is true that being the citizens of a poor,
underdeveloped country like Bangladesh we cannot expect a perfect city but we expect a
hassle free city life that can provide the dire need of a smooth drainage system. There have
been lots of discussions, hypothetical analyses, planning, strategy making and many other
things done by the different government but so far nothing has been resulted to turn the citys
The Mayor-elect of Dhaka City Corporation (DCC), Sadek Hossain Khoka, said that he
would resort to all possible ways and means to ensure adequate civic amenities and solve the
problems faced by the city-dwellers (Ahad). Every time the government is saying that the
solution is coming. But reality is, we see some awkward working, then again the problems.
The government does not want to take the whole responsibility of solving the problems.
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There is no proper future, long-term plan. In the end, the beautification program is a matter of
joke.
So to have the proper felling, I have done my survey on different kinds of people like
students, housewives, officials etc. according to their age, gender, and living area. They were
from different parts of Dhaka city like Banani, Mohammadpur, Mirpur etc. I tried to make the
sample random but there was limitation of time. So my sample size became very small,
which may not be the actual representative of the population. There were 11 questions in my
survey questionnaire. The answers were dissimilar among different demographic regions.
80.00%
69.20%
70.00%
60.00%
50.00%
40.00%
30.00%
10.00%
0.00%
Yes No Both are important 0.00%
Indifferent
The above bar graph is representing the answer of Was beautification more important
than solving the more pressing problems? Obviously most of the people (69.2%) answered
No. This is supporting my hypothesis, though there were some persons who thought
differently.
Then the following graph is showing the peoples view about the lifetime of the
beautification program. No one expects that the project will last for more than five years.
Thirty percent people thinks that this would stay for 5 years and nearly fifteen percent
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peoples view is one-year time. But the majority (43.8%) supported that it would not have a
50%
45% 43.80%
40%
35%
30.80%
30%
25%
20%
15.40%
15%
10%
5%
0%
0.00%
More than 5 years 1-5 years 1 year Less than 6 months
50.00%
46.20%
45.00%
40.00%
35.00%
30.80%
30.00%
25.00%
20.00%
15.40%
15.00%
10.00% 7.70%
5.00%
0.00%
Like it Neutral Do not like it Hate it
Again when I asked them about their feelings towards the beautification program,
then there were surprising responses. Most of the people (46.2%) said that they liked the job.
Some were confused but 7.7% have replied that they hated the beautification job.
Now the survey gives the opinion that those who supported the job beautification at
the first step (think it is helpful to promote the image of Dhaka), most of them was still united
to their opinion even at the end (like the beautification program). This happened because
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people did not want to mention beautification as a totally useless job as at least it made the
city to some extent beautiful. Overall most of the individuals supported my hypothesis.
I have taken interview of two government officials. One of them complained about
traffic jam, environment pollution and about the inefficient cleaning system. From the most
of the areas DCC has removed the central dustbins and made the system that cleaners should
go house to house to collect the garbage. However, the cleaners should provide service
without any pay from the local people, but they do not do so. But he thinks that the
government knows about all our problems but not aware. When I asked him about
beautification he said that the project required a lot of money and the road based expenditure
is acceptable. He doubts that the lifetime of this program has ended. The other person said
that DCC took the care of garbage management, street lighting and building infrastructures
and public services. But they are not successful in every aspect. Dhaka city has many serious
problems like lack of roads, inadequate traffic system, poor garbage management and poorly
maintained infrastructure. This beautification was not meant to solve these problems. And
about road-based beautification, his opinion was the project was made to clean the roads used
by SAARC summit, and to make extensive lighting and decoration along the way. This
beautification is temporary and means little to general citizens. And as a host country for
SAARC, Bangladesh should provide necessary security and a festive look to the guests. It
was important to ensure that the scenario like looks can be deceiving doesnt happen.
However, both of them gave the mixed responses about the beautification job that they like
the beautification but the government should not forget about the real problems.
So my survey and interviews have given me the idea that inhabitants of the Dhaka
city really want their city to be beautiful. Though most of them supported my hypothesis but
they did not willing to say that beautification was an illogical job. We want to see our city
beautiful but we cannot bear so many problems. The government should be conscious enough
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to promote the image of Dhaka by solving the problems first. If the dwellers become satisfied
with the condition, then no extra effort would be needed to promote the image of the city.
My last word is that Dhaka city needs to be beautiful but before the beautification it is
more important to solve the core problems. Ignoring all the other problems, in order to
promote the image of the city through the beautification is not a good perception. We may
have another research about the future appearance of Dhaka city. The city by the banks of the
Buriganga, the city of mosques, the capital of Bangladesh has to survive the test of time. In
order to achieve that goal, the city needs to grow beautifully through a proper planning.
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Works Cited
Ahad, Ghulam. Khoka for metro-govt: People have to pay for better service. 19 December
Alam, Saiful. Road beautification programme on: City wears attractive look. New Age
view.cgi/24/13731 >.
Karim, Dr. Md. Masud. Light Rail Transit in Dhaka. 19 December 2005 < http:// www.eng-
consult.com/pub/stararticle.htm >.
Sadique, Mahfuz. Dhakas Facelift: Untamed Beauty. New Age 4 February 2005.
Appendix