FE Report
A serious lack of coordination between Chittagong Development Authority (CDA) and Chittagong City Corporation (CCC) seems to have stymied the overall development of the country's port city, a research finds.
"The housing and other construction projects of both CDA and CCC either got delayed or withheld based on compliance and other issues," says the report, published by the BRAC Institute of Governance and Development (BIGD), BRAC University.
BIGD recently unveiled the research findings on 'State of Cities: Governance for a Livable Chittagong' that examines state of Chittagong city on various dimensions, including public services, environmental degradation and governance.
Apart from CDA and CCC, for lack of coordination among some other factors, 'the city's existing regulatory system has largely failed to tax externalities', the report noted.
Showing absence of effective coordination among different government agencies in monitoring water quality, managing air and noise pollution, the report said, "Failure in acting together by all these agencies means the pollutants are maximizing their personal gains at the cost of society."
These agencies include the Department of Environment (DoE), Chittagong Water and Sewerage Authority (CWASA), the Department of Public Health Engineering (DPHE), Bangladesh Road Transport Authority (BRTA), CCC, and Bangladesh Road Transport Corporation (BRTC).
It also cited coordination among the relevant authorities as critical to providing better sanitation and transport services.
The report identified 'dual service delivery model' for slum and non-slum residents as well as the presence of multiple authorities as the 'fundamental flaw' of the overall service-delivery system in Chittagong-seen as Bangladesh's commercial lifeline.
Failure of CDA, CCC and the National Housing Authority Bangladesh (NHA) to provide housing to the low-income people forced a large number of poor people to take shelters in slums and other informal settlements, the study found.
Because of not having services from the formal agencies, the slum-landlords arrange for service provision of shared gas, controlled electricity, water, shared toilet facilities etc.
"These informal arrangements cannot function as substitutes for formal service delivery."
City's transport management also remains unaddressed in line with the master plan, the report said. In such a situation, unlicensed and unregulated transport such as paddled and battery-powered rickshaws is fulfilling the demand-supply gap and limiting city's mobility, it added.
"The informal agencies liaise with the formal institutions to keep unlicensed rickshaws and other informal modes of transport to ply on the streets through monetary exchange," the report stated.
Regarding the Chittagong's environment issue, it mentioned the Karnaphuli River as a classic example that shows how a common pool of resources had to bear the cost of the city's mal-governance, perpetuated by the absence of a needs-based development model.
Elaborating on absence of 'need-based' development, the BIGD report cited that largely ignoring the priority projects, identified in CDA mater plans, some even prioritized in early 1960s, and the civil-society voice, the authorities are implementing some of the least-priority projects such as flyover. "Any major projects undertaken by CDA and other entities should be subject to public hearings if they are not in the master plan or other important plans."
The report also cited the role of civil-society groups and non-governmental organizations (NGOs) as very crucial for better service delivery to the city-dwellers and saving the environment.
For lack of accountability of the agencies, the inhabitants are being deprived of quality services, and even they are discouraged from lodging complaints due to feeble redressing mechanism.
As most agencies concerned are not ultimately accountable to either the elected local governance body, CCC, or city-dwellers, among others, for non-implementation of master plan, it affects the implementation of the city's priority projects.
"They (agencies) often fulfill the mandates of their line ministries," the report added.
The BIGD earlier in 2012 and 2013 published two such reports focusing state of urban governance of Dhaka and Narayanganj cities.
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