Fresh distress call from Zinda Park

Green activists continue to protest the recent move taken by Rajdhani Unnayan Kartripakkha (RAJUK) to take over the Zinda Park. Situated in Rupganj upazila of Narayanganj, Zinda Park was set up through voluntary participation of the local people on their land 33 years ago. Agra Pathik Palli Samity, an association of the people who founded Zinda Park, has been maintaining the park since its inception.
The park provides an ideal place for recreation of the visitors from home and abroad and means of livelihood for a large number of families displaced over the years following implementation of Purbachal Housing Project by the RAJUK. Locals complain that the RAJUK has planned Purbachal Housing Project in such a way that the Zinda Park falls within its limit. It may be mentioned that in the face of public protests, RAJUK was forced to cancel a housing project it had planned in the area in 2008.
Various rights organizations formed a human chain in front of the Jatiya Press Club on March 03 last to protest the RAJUK's move to grab Zinda Park. Speaking at the human
chain, leaders of the organizations said the citizens do not want that the RAJUK should take up unplanned land development and housing projects and play the role like that of land grabbers. Unplanned land development and housing projects pose a serious threat to environment of Dhaka city and the adjoining areas, they said. Local people and the green activists have been protesting the RAJUK's move to control Zinda Park for quite a long time but to no effect.
The park, spread over an area of 150 acres of land, was set up 33 years ago by a group of enthusiastic youths of the area and since then they have been maintaining this vast green space. About 4000 people have found means of earning their livelihood by working in the park. The park is also an important tourist attraction of the area visited regularly by hundreds of people from home and abroad. The Zinda Park Rakkha (protection) Committee of Paribesh Bachao Andolan (POBA) has long been urging the government to take steps against the RAJUK, the lone city development authority, now  trying to hand over the management of Zinda Park to another body. POBA says that if the management of the park is transferred to others, its maintenance would not be carried out efficiently. The natural beauty and ecological balance of the Park would be destroyed. The POBA alleges that the RAJUK is bent upon forming a new managing committee of its choice for Zinda Park.
In September 2010, a large number of people and leaders of POBA went on a 24-hour hunger strike in Narayanganj to save Zinda Park. Agra Pathik Palli Samity, formed in 1980, began to develop the vast tract of land donated by local people into a park. Zinda Park has as many as ten thousand different kinds of tress, three lakes and several rest houses. The  RAJUK says that the park falls under the jurisdiction of its Purbachal Housing Project and that it can lease out the site to a third party. POBA chairman Abu Naser Khan says that Zinda Park is an example of people's voluntary participation in developing a vast green space and maintaining it successfully for the last 33 years. He had told the media that the RAJUK move had been directed towards satisfying the desire of some influential persons of the locality. According to a report published in a local daily, Deputy Commissioner (DC) of Narayanganj, in a letter sent to the RAJUK, had also requested the city development authority not to take away the management of the Zinda Park from Agra Pathik Palli Samity. In his letter the DC observed the Samity has been successfully running the park and it is meaningless to take it away from them.
 An official of RAJUK said that the city development authority decided to hand over the park on lease to some organizations for turning it into a 'world class recreational park'. The struggle by the local people to save Zinda Park continues.
All concerned strongly feel that RAJUK should discharge its duties as a protector of parks and open spaces and desist from taking any move that may jeopardise their existence like the one-Zinda Park.
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