What you can expect from your city's mayor

FOR ordinary people living in Bangladesh, the process preceding the city corporation elections is not merely limited to listening to long, never-ending speeches about what the aspiring mayoral candidate can do for your city. It's the only time in five years (or in this case seven years) when residents of a city can hope to voice their concerns and their grievances to those people who seek to represent their city on a national platform. This is the time when your city's politicians are all ears; they are willing to hear if only to ensure you that everything will be fixed when they come to power. All of us know how that works but there is still a dim hope that our voices will be heard, our expectations will be met. 

For all the mayoral hopefuls who are still unsure about what their constituents expect from them, the demands, at least in paper, are very simple. We want our city to run just as you, the politicians, have us believe will be run when you are in charge. 

Safe drinking water, for example, is still an unfulfilled dream in many parts of the country. Let aside clean water, in many parts of the capital city residents suffer from little to no water supply especially during the summer season. Residents in South Shewrapara, Shukrabad, Mohammadpur and almost every other part of the capital city, have complained time and again of 'dirty', 'foul smelling' drinking water, adding that WASA had done little to salvage the situation in the past. Like previous years, the Dhaka Water Supply and Sewerage Authority (WASA) had once again promised that this year would be different. This year, they announce, there will be no scarcity of drinking water in Dhaka. Interestingly, some WASA officials, on the condition of anonymity, informed different newspapers that the quality of water at different treatments plants of WASA is unlikely to improve before the monsoon "because the Buriganga and Shitalakkhya rivers were highly populated." 

This brings us to the next concern on our list of expectations from our mayoral aspirants. Clean, unpolluted rivers. Eighty-five percent of Dhaka's water demands are met from below the ground, as most of the surface water is contaminated. Bangladesh is said to be one of the most fertile lands in the world. And yet, we struggle to keep our rivers clean and our water safe. The rivers Buriganga and Turag, which were once a lifeline of Dhaka, are now considered as the most polluted rivers of the country, thanks to the unchecked dumping of human and industrial waste. 

Apart from adding to river pollution, tanneries on the banks of the rivers also affect the livelihood and living standards of people living by river banks. The stench, toxic fumes and waste exuded by these factories have unimaginable effects on the health of the residents of those areas, who seem to have quietly accepted their fate of living in these almost inhabitable parts of the city. While the government had taken steps to curb river pollution by planning to relocate tanneries outside the capital and asking illegal encroachers to vacate the river, little has been achieved till date. Maybe, just maybe, our next mayor could finally take pity on the state of their people and environment, and pay some attention to this issue? 

Let's now look at the subject of mobility in the capital city. Apart from hartals and maybe the weekends, when was the last time you traversed the roads of the city without having to worry about the insane traffic that plagues every single part of the city? Despite traffic signals being installed at almost every main road of the city, we still have to rely on the mercy of the traffic police and 'polite' road manners to reach a 10-minutes distance in an hour. The traffic signals don't seem to be functioning and our traffic police seem to be lacking in proper training and conduct. It's a shame that every time a foreigner visits Dhaka, their main bone of contention is our worsening traffic situation and yet, the grumblings of both locals and tourists fall on deaf ears. Add to that the insensible rallies, like the one brought out by Shipping Minister Shahjahan Khan and his supporters a few days back, on main roads and we are faced with hours of gridlock all over the city. Dear to-be mayor, please do finally pay heed to our pleas. If need be, please talk to the DMP and the home ministry and find a sustainable, lasting solution to this unbearable, quite solvable problem. 

Talking about mobility, will we ever have safe roads that are not dug up or in ruinous conditions or have big, gaping potholes or are basically unusable? This Saturday, a road crash in the Moghbazar intersection left two construction workers dead and one seriously injured. It is especially during the monsoon that unrepaired roads, deep potholes and open drains are left with only a tree branch to mark the place. How can just a branch of a tree signal the presence of a risky, dangerous location ahead? The blame game must stop now. The responsibility lies squarely on the shoulders of the city corporations. So can we finally expect our next mayors to shape up and do a better job to ensure that the residents of their city don't have to lose their limbs or, in worst cases, their lives because of an open manhole or unrepaired roads?  

One can't walk past many areas of the city without holding a handkerchief to their nose because of the terrible stench emanating from open or unrepaired drains. Farmgate, Hatirjheel, Gulshan-1, Mohammadpur, Dhanmondi – almost every area of the city is beleaguered by the stench emanating from open drains. Even the 'genteel' neighbourhoods of the city are not spared from these overpowering odours. The city corporations are responsible for ensuring proper drainage system around the city. Our next mayors need to unclog their nose and smell the stench to ensure that the residents of their city need not suffer any longer from this problem. 

We don't find many open public spaces and playgrounds in the city where people can spend their leisure time. On top of that, in the past many of these 'public' spaces were closed for the public. We expect our mayors to take up an initiative to initiate more open, free-for-all public areas which the residents of the city can take pride in and enjoy. 

In the recent past, our city mayors and leaders seemed to have been more focused on short-run goals instead of focussing on building a legacy that will be remembered for generations to come. While all of the issues listed above fall under the jurisdiction of city corporations and in effect fall under the official jurisdiction of the mayor(s), we know that it would be utopian to think that every issue will be solved after the coming elections. However, despite some misgivings based on prior performance, we still carry a glimmer of hope that our future mayors will, for once, put aside politics to concentrate on the issues that they vow to take care of. That's truly the least we can expect.  

The writer is a journalist of The Daily Star.