How many more will die before Chattogram’s drains are fixed?

We are saddened and deeply troubled to hear of yet another death in Chattogram as a result of the city's uncovered drains. This time, the victim was 19-year-old Sehrin Mahbub Sadia, who slipped on the wet road and fell in. The long and deep drain was clogged with waste, and it took the fire service divers around five hours to recover her body, about 100 feet from where she fell in.

There are no words of condolence worthy of the loss of such a young life—that too, from such sheer negligence. Only about a month ago, a similar incident occurred when vegetable trader Saleh Ahmed fell into a roadside drain, never to be found again. We are dumbfounded to find that—despite such a recent tragedy, and despite the fact that at least two more people were killed and many others sustained injuries in similar incidents over the past four months—the city authorities took no responsible actions to ensure that such preventable accidents do not occur again. It is noteworthy that, at the time, Mayor Rejaul Karim Chowdhury told journalists that steps would be taken to cover up open drains and build retaining walls around canals, but no such actions were taken. 

It is even more frustrating to find that the Chattogram City Corporation's (CCC) and Chattogram Development Authority's (CDA) reactions to Sadia's death are a repeat of the blame game that we had witnessed after Saleh's death. The fact that neither department is willing to accept responsibility is a reflection of the inefficiency and ineptitude that has continued to mar the city authorities' daily operations. In fact, this lack of coordination amongst related agencies, along with poor planning and bureaucratic hurdles, have been identified as the major reasons behind the rising costs and delays in the CDA project to improve Chattogram's drainage system. Rather, the project is now considered to have made waterlogging even worse in the city. 

What is the point of development projects that end up costing the taxpayers more, fail to solve the issues they are meant to address, and actually make things worse? The losses from the failure to improve the city's drainage system have not only had socioeconomic repercussions—lives of innocent people have also been lost as a result. Such criminal negligence from the Chattogram city authorities must be investigated immediately, and the government must show its commitment towards its people by ensuring that no more lives are lost from such preventable accidents, especially when some very simple steps can be taken to avoid them.