Urbanisation policy

June 03, 2007 00:00:00

It is reported that the government is going to finalise a national urbanisation policy soon. The policy is likely to focus on decentralisation of civic amenities, such as health, education and infrastructures, to ease pressure on the capital. It will aim at building a cleaner Dhaka.

The past government also formulated a draft national urbanisation policy at the fag end of its tenure. It is learnt that its aim was also to ease huge pressure on civic amenities in the capital. But the fate of that policy is like many other policies that subsequently became untraceable or remained in the draft form to gather dusts.

We expect that the caretaker government would take immediate steps for finalising the urbanisation policy after reviewing all requirements needed to be met for making every town of the country a centre of development. To make Dhaka clean, there is the need to relocate and establish new garment factories, higher educational institutions and big industrial units in some convenient places outside the city.

At the same time, establishment of new educational institutions, business firms and industrial units in a scattered manner in the city should have to be discouraged in the final urbanisation policy. Without such strict provisions, the capital city cannot be saved from an unmanageable population pressure and a dismal environmental degradation.

Shihab Hossain

Mohammadpur

Dhaka