Dhaka City's Transportation Problem :Is there any solution ?
- Part 3 -

Prof. Bijon B. Sarma *

HOW THE PROBLEM CAN BE SOLVED :

We shall now present our proposal to solve the problem. One serious lacking of our policy makers is, they always look at the transportation problem as a "physical problem" and thus endeavor to solve it through "physical measures" only. The fact is, transportation problem by nature has two aspects : physical and administrative, and needs to be addressed accordingly.

The transportation problem of Dhaka city has to be addressed from the following platforms :
01. CENTRAL GOVERNMENT'S DECISION AND COMMITMENT ON SOME FACTORS OF THE COUNTRY (HAVING EFFECT ON THE CITY'S TRANSPORTATION).
02. MACRO AND MICRO LEVEL ADMINISTRATIVE DECISIONS BY THE URBAN AUTHORITIES.
03. URBAN AUTHORITIES' DECISIONS ON PHYSICAL DEVELOPMENT.
04. URBAN AUTHORITIES' DECISIONS ON TRANSPORT MANAGEMENT.

We shall present hereunder brief description of the above.

01. Central government's decision on factors having effect on city's transportation: At the very beginning the government would have to decide whether they would continue the tradition of the British and Pakistani colonial government or act as a democratic government. In democratic system not the interests of the royalties and bureaucrats, but that of the common people comes first. During British colonial period, the bureaucrats shrewdly served their own interest by appeasing the British royalties.

During Pakistani colonial period they continued the same, where the affluent people from Pakistan replaced the British royalties. During the military ruled pseudo democracy (from 1975 to 1990) the bureaucrats treated the military officials as masters. Even though democracy was initiated in the country in 1990, still the bureaucrats are could not change their allegiance.
Still today they take up programs and projects where from they can collect money to satisfy the political party's and their financial interests. Since multinational companies, dishonest foreign companies and affluent businessmen unofficially finance the cost of the political parties, at times the bureaucrats are compelled to take up projects which can ensure the above conditions. The case of bribing one ex-prime minister's son by a foreign telecommunication company for getting business is one of many unexposed cases.

Even in democratic Bangladesh the bureaucrats have established clear cut difference between the privileged group (comprising of bureaucrats, influential politicians and affluent people) and the disadvantaged group (i.e. the common people). In the above context, no positive result should be expected unless the government changes the previous attitude.

In doing so they must look into the interest of the entire country and not of Dhaka city alone. We put here our specific proposal for two measures which would express their honor for democracy. These are: (a) Decentralization of central administration and (b) Introduction of Social housing.

(a) DECENTRALIZATION: A city gets the essential finance from various sources, where one principal source is government fund. Dhaka city is now getting excessive source, the ill effect of which is being seen in price hike and excess of wealth including vehicles. At this context we propose that some ministries (say 10) be transferred to 5 divisional headquarters. As soon as these ministries would be shifted, it would on one hand ease the abnormal situation of Dhaka and enormously help the economy of the divisional cities.

Nowadays digital technology has rendered communication extremely easy. The above mentioned ministries would have their liaison offices in Dhaka with such provisions that all digitally transferable information and documents generated in the Divisional level would be transferred to the city and vice versa.

In addition there will be provision for physical transfer of documents in special courier within 24 hours. The Ministers and other responsible personnel working in the divisions would take the help of 'tele' or 'video' conference when needed. In the greater interest of the country and as part of the solution to Dhaka city's transportation problem, we propose that the following ministries be immediately shifted to the following divisional cities:

MINISTRIES	PRESENT LOCATION	NEW LOCATION (PROPOSED)
Ministry of Agriculture	Dhaka	Rajshahi
Ministry of Cultural Affairs	Dhaka	Rajshahi
Ministry of Food & Disaster Management	Dhaka	Barisal
Ministry of Fisheries and Livestock	Dhaka	Barisal
Ministry of Religious Affairs (MORA)	Dhaka	Sylhet
Ministry of Environment and Forest	Dhaka	Sylhet
MMinistry of Textile and Jute	Dhaka	Khulna
Ministry of Chittagong Hills Tracts Affairs	Dhaka	Chittagong
Ministry of Commerce	Dhaka	Chittagong

(b) SOCIAL HOUSING :

The concept of Social Housing is not yet popular in Bangladesh. In Bangladesh we are aware of two types of housing, like: (i) Government housing (or quarter), where only the government servants can live on highly reduced rent and (ii) Private housing, where both the common people and government servants can live on negotiable rents. As deviation from this concept "Social Housing" is the house constructed by the government where both the government servants and common people can live on negotiable rent.

Large cities like Dhaka is not the place where all people should live or wish to live for all time to come. The government should not patronize a system in which people, who are not essential for the city may be encouraged to live here. The system of renting houses by private owners helps huge number of non-essential people to live here. The present trend of owned-apartment has created some hindrance against the monopolistic house rent business.

Even though better than the renting system, the present system of owned-apartments have got severe defect. Usually man rent house for temporary living. On the other hand they purchase house or apartment for security and as an asset for all time to come. However, the way owned-apartments are being constructed, sold and managed, these no more exist as "permanent asset".

At present the owners of the apartment building are given equal right and share on the land. In almost all the apartment buildings no owner would ever be able to construct an independent house on the tiny land he owns. Land is usually known as a permanent asset. However, a tiny land mentioned above in no way can be treated as permanent asset.

Multi-level apartment buildings are constructed with cement and steel. These materials have fixed life-span. The life of a building depends upon on its design, system of construction, environment, natural hazard etc. Even if we ignore the case of natural hazard which may smash a building at any time, all buildings have limited life.

In Engineering field the life of a brick building is taken to be about 60 years and that of a concrete building, 80-100 years. Even though the prediction has been proved to have been true in case of brick building, it has not been still been proved for concrete building, because the age of cement and concrete still did not came to this level. From the available information, one of the earliest apartment building constructed in Mumbai collapsed after 30 years.



to be continued.....

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* Prof. Bijon B. Sarma (Dean, Faculty of Architecture and Planning and Head, Department of architecture Ahsanullah University of Sc. & Tech. (AUST) )contributes to e-pao.net regularly. The writer can be contacted at rangada(at)gmail(dot)com
This article was webcasted on October 25th, 2009.

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