Editorial
Bifurcated Dhaka City Corporation
The new entities need empowerment to deliver
Area-wise, our capital city is not as large as its counterparts in other countries. In terms of population, however, Dhaka is inhabited by 1.2 crore people. It is more populous than even several countries. The core purpose of city governance is delivery of services or providing access to civic amenities. This has to do more with people than with area.
Given the burgeoning population of Dhaka city, increasing density of people per kilometer, rapid urbanisation with real estate boom and other forms of habitats, shanties not excluded, the DCC in its present shape and form was incapable of providing adequate services to city-dwellers. It was an unwieldy proposition for one mayoral office to, on the one hand, coordinate and supervise 92 wards, and on the other, equally if not more importantly, synchronise with the utility service agencies.
On the face of it, therefore, the splitting of DCC into two, the north and south city corporations could be considered logical. But leaving it at that will be cosmetic; for the dispensation to operate effectively some fresh thinking must go into their remoulding. In the essence, it would need a legal framework not just for formalising the division but principally to provide a certain form of metropolitan governance. First and foremost, the two city corporations will have to be autonomous bodies headed by empowered mayors. They might have an administrative link to the LGED ministry but operationally these must have freedom of action with separate allocations, their own taxation system, participatory planning and project implementation. In most metropolises around the world the mayoral offices exercise enormous powers to govern the cities.
The overarching reorganisation of the corporations calls for a legal empowerment framework. This can be done in two phases: First, a functional arrangement will have to be worked out and codified between the city corporation mayors and the heads of the utility organisations, the synergy then going down to area offices of the service agencies. Secondly and ideally, the utility organisations like gas, electricity, water, surface drainage and underground sewerage should be brought under the purview of mayoral office.
Our sole point of emphasis at this stage is on holding timely elections to the city corporations. Because this is sorely missing, mayors of major city corporations like Dhaka and Chittagong overstay the hospitality of their constituencies for painfully long periods. This is unacceptable.
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