CCC struggles to clean city canals amid funding row

The Chattogram City Corporation is struggling to clean its 1,600-kilometre drainage network and 57 canals due to a lack of modern machinery.

The government has finally approved a four-year-old project for CCC to procure essential equipment, but with a new condition that 60 percent of the project funds will be given as a loan and the remaining 40 percent as a grant.

The CCC, which usually operates on government grants and its own funds, now finds itself in a debt trap under the new condition.

According to CCC officials, the project includes plans to purchase a range of vehicles and equipment, including five pickup trucks, 65 dump trucks of various sizes, four backhoe loaders, nine wheel loaders, one skid-steer loader, one amphibious excavator, eight excavators of different sizes, 21 mini garbage trippers, one road sweeping machine, five garbage compactors, and 200 mobile waste containers.

With a huge burden of loans already in place, the CCC is unwilling to take on more loans for equipment purchases, said its Chief Executive Officer Sheikh Muhammad Touhidul Islam.

With a huge burden of loans already in place, the CCC is unwilling to take on more loans for equipment purchases.

Sheikh Muhammad Touhidul Islam Chief executive officer

The CCC currently owes Tk 400 crore to contractors and an additional Tk 100 crore to the government. This existing liability is the main reason Mayor Shahadat Hossain is reluctant to agree to further loan conditions, said the CEO.

Shahadat said, "This loan condition is not a mature move by the finance ministry. CCC is a service-providing organisation, not a commercial entity, and hence it is not suited to operate under commercial loan terms paying interest."

"The ministry fails to understand the project's importance. If implemented, it would alleviate waterlogging and keep the city clean. To this end, we badly need new equipment," he added.

Earlier, at an event on September 22, he said, "Our Tk 400 crore project to procure new equipment got only Tk 298 crore approval from the finance ministry, and then they told me that Tk 160 crore of it would be given as a loan with 5 percent interest. They will only give us a Tk 60 crore grant; the rest the CCC has to bear."

In response, Foyez Ahmed Tayeb, special assistant to the chief adviser, while speaking at the same event, urged the CCC to accept the loan and advised it to become more self-reliant.

Moreover, the LGRD Ministry provided an expensive weed harvester worth about Tk 6 crore -- designed to clean floating waste and hyacinth from waterbodies -- to the CCC even though it was not requested.

The machine is unfit for Chattogram's shallow and narrow canals, said CCC Chief Sanitation Officer Commander Ikhtiyar Uddin Ahmed Chowdhury.