Natural environmental scenario of Dhaka city

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Sarwar Md Saifullah Khaled | Published: November 14, 2015 00:00:00 | Updated: November 30, 2024 06:01:00

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A walk by the river Buriganga or a train ride from Kamalapur in the capital city of Dhaka up to Tangail would just upset one's sense of smell. Stench oozing out of 'biologically dead' water-bodies fills the air all along. The waters of the river flowing by the capital and the ditches and streams along the rail route are all pitch-dark, sending out stomach-upsetting foul odours. The other rivers around the capital and its environments are also rotting with indiscriminate discharge of waste and sewage: solid and liquid, household, medical, and industrial.
Country's eminent campaigners for 'Save Buriganga, Save Lives' civil-society movement says, "Unfortunately, all these bad things - encroachment, dumping of industrial waste and other abuses - occur in full knowledge of the authorities. The water of the Buriganga is now so polluted that all fish have died, and increasing filth and human waste have turned it like a black gel. Even rowing across the river is now difficult for it smells so badly. The pollutants have eaten up all oxygen in the Buriganga and we call it biologically dead. It is like a septic tank. There is no fish or aquatic life in this river apart from zero-oxygen-survival kind of organisms".
Chemicals such as cadmium and chromium, and other elements such as mercury carried by the industrial waste are also creeping into the groundwater, posing a serious threat to public health. Now the selfsame authorities are taking up a dredging project for the Buriganga and its sisters to replicate such clean-up. Among the other rivers pushed into the rot are the Turag, the Balu and the Sitalakhya. All are arteries of the capital city of Dhaka, which are being polluted by pollutants of all sorts before the nose of all authorities concerned. Everyone of the onlookers is thus getting endangered through such slow-poisoning. The polluters going unpunished are tanneries, chemical and other jerry-built industrial units at the city heart, Dhaka city corporations' garbage-disposal section, DWASA's sewerage authorities and industries mushrooming sans effluent-treatment plant (ETP) in the belt around the capital of the country.
Additionally, air and noise pollution also took a serious turn, amid smog and veritable dust cloud at some places, particularly construction sites, and the honking of gaggles of vehicles. Sound pollution has been the bane of Dhaka dwellers in recent times. Traffic horns, sounds of vehicles, use of micro-phones and many other sound sources are going out in the city or staying at home is painful. Green activists say that though there is Sound Pollution (Control) Rules (2006) to cut sound pollution, it is hardly enforced. The Department of Environment (DoE), city corporations, RAJUK, local government bodies and law enforcing agencies may take necessary steps to stop the menace of sound pollution that harms people's health, causing hearing loss or mental stress and even hypertensions - especially among children and elderly citizens.      
Hell with industrialisation without proper zoning. The green campaigners point out that indiscriminate building of industries is proscribed in all international and national laws, including the Kyoto Protocol. Life first, health first and industry must come thereafter at this stage of national economic development around the globe. A morning spot visit to BSMMU, Ibrahim Memorial Hospital's both sections - cardiac and diabetes - and diagnostic centres, to name a few, would give one a cue to the curse of living in untidy, filthy, unhealthy, polluted environment that prevails in Bangladesh's capital city of Dhaka.
Thousands are thronging there - many with diabetic complications or with mortal ailment like heart, kidney and liver diseases, and cancer. Aggregate cost of treatment for the critical ones outweighs profit from the industries that spew untreated toxic wastes into the environment, into the rivers. Government-set deadlines for ETP installation under a law and relocation of industries, particularly tanneries from the city's Hazaribagh to Savar, chemical and garment factories, have fallen dead. Reasons shown are aplenty. A subtle one borders on a motive for making some gains from these schemes, too, in the form of cash handouts from the state exchequer.
There are thoughts and projects on paper, including a Japanese funded one, for Dhaka's garbage disposal in modern methods. These household wastes - and even some medical ones - that litter city streets were supposed to be converted to commodities, like fertilizer and power. Up till now, city-dwellers have to cover their nose with handkerchief or facial tissue while walking down roads and lanes. Rubbish keeps rotting in open piles, emitting stench.
For salvaging the endangered rivers, clean-up projects have been executed spending tens of millions of Takas. Allegations have it that much of the money spent for the purpose went down the drain. The filth dug up from riverbeds is largely landed down again into the rivers. Water engineers and architects including the country's leading environmental activists, are among experts who are bitterly critical of such piecemeal solution. A recent proposal from China for undertaking a comprehensive 'river-restoration' project for reviving the rivers around Dhaka city to their natural flows is hanging up in the air.
A World Bank study says the aforesaid four major rivers - viz Buriganga, Sitalakhya, Turag and Balu - near Dhaka receive 1.5 million cubic metres of waste water every day from 7,000 industrial units in surrounding areas and another 500 thousand cubic metres from other sources like sewerage waste. Unabated encroachment that prevents the free flow of rivers' water, the dumping of medicinal waste and waste of river passengers have compounded the problem making the water unusable for humans and livestock also.
A major therapy to clean the rivers around Dhaka city, garbage and waste management and control air pollution is a must. Such remedy seems not to be the cup of tea for those who had improvised in the past. Recently Dhaka has been damned to 'second-worst livable' city in the world in international ratings after the civil war ravaged Syrian capital Damascus. Second-or third-best one may not be an idle jest. Dhaka is placed - by nature and the rulers' centuries back - in one of the best settings of cities in the globe. But now piles of garbage on Dhaka city roads and the bitterly polluted surrounding rivers make life hell here. Why not try to turn it around?  

The writer is a retired Professor of Economics, BCS General Education Cadre. E-mail: smsaifullah_khaled@yahoo.com, sarwarmdskhaled@gmail.com