Third Schedule and city corporations' inertia

Most residents of Dhaka city are unaware of the enormous duties and responsibilities that the City Corporation Act of 2009 has vested in two city corporations. There should be no genuine reason to blame them for not knowing those. Possibly, most officials and even the elected heads of the city corporations are not conversant with the same.
The Third Schedule of the City Corporation Act of 2009 delineates works to be done by the city corporations across the country. The Schedule has hardly skipped any area/activity related to the comfortable living of residents of different city corporations. It is not just cleaning roads or drains or removing garbage. The City Corporations, according to the Schedule in question, are required to ensure most civic facilities to the urbanites and make their life comfortable and hassle-free.
The city corporations of Dhaka or, for that matter, identical entities in other cities have been failing to meet not even a fraction of such facilities, either for want of resources or for lack of genuine efforts.
Some jobs the Dhaka city corporations, however, have been doing regularly. These include cleaning of the city roads, removing garbage and lighting the streets after dusk. They also clean surface drains intermittently. Yet they skip many tasks, deliberately or otherwise.
The state of affairs with the city pavements is a case in point. Pavements or footpaths are supposed to be used by pedestrians sans any hindrances, but the reality is otherwise. Be it in the south or north of the city corporations, the pavements remain occupied by makeshift shops or hawkers from morning till midnight. Not just pavements, in many busy areas, hawkers keep portions of roads occupied, causing unnecessary suffering to pedestrians and vehicles.
There are stories galore about how city pavements have transformed into money spinners for some unscrupulous people. In exchange for the pavements to be used illegally by hawkers, they allegedly earn millions every month across the city. It is the job of the city corporation people to keep pavements safe for uninterrupted movement of pedestrians, but they have failed miserably in their task.
The plying of rickshaws is another area that highlights how indifferent the city corporations are to blatant breaches of law on city streets. Dhaka city had nearly 90,000 rickshaws with valid licences in the late seventies. Since then, unlicensed rickshaws started proliferating and their number has risen to around half a million or more. These three-wheelers have become severe headaches for people responsible for the city's traffic management. As if to make things worse, a faster mode of rickshaws, the battery-run ones, is now swamping the roads, lanes and by-lanes. These rickshaws are unsafe for travelling. Allegedly, with the backing from some elements both in and without uniform, the battery-run rickshaws are plying the city streets with impunity. Both city corporations and police are finding it convenient to keep their eyes shut.
Among hundreds of problems commuters face in Dhaka, the traffic congestion in front of Mohakhali inter-district bus terminal is one. From dawn till late at night, it is truly difficult to get through that place. Buses are kept parked in two to three rows on both sides of the road in front of the terminal. Even one vehicle finds it almost impossible to wriggle through a maze of buses. One wonders whether the city father concerned has ever used this route. The traffic situation in front of the terminal shows the total apathy of the Dhaka North City Corporation to the commuters' plight.
One can cite many more problems that have remained unaddressed by the two city corporations belonging to one of the most densely populated megacities in the world. Hopefully, the men in charge would spare a little time to devise measures for resolving the problems. Some problems have become difficult to resolve because of prolonged indifference. At least there should be efforts to lessen their impact on public life.

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