Dhaka North City Corporation (DNCC) Mayor Md Atiqul Islam on Thursday announced to provide 10 per cent holding tax rebate for the city dwellers if they have arrangement for water harvesting to keep the rainfall waters.
“We destroyed the city, ground water level is declining and we are not storing rain water through the water harvesting process. If any city building does have a water harvesting arrangement, I am the DNCC mayor declaring to provide a 10 per cent tax rebate. Do the campaign of rain harvesting, lets save water for the city,” he announced at a webinar.
I have already started providing a 10 per cent holding tax rebate for the city dwellers if they have rooftop gardening at their houses. And, I want to make the city an oxygen hub as city people face extreme heat due to lack of oxygen hub, lack of city forest, he added.
The mayor made the announcement while addressing a virtual event of anti-pollution advocacy project titled “Promoting Democratic Governance and Collective Advocacy for Environmental Protection in Dhaka city” by Water keepers Bangladesh in collaboration with USAID, FCDO and Counterpart International (CPI).
The DNCC is working to plant 200,000 trees across the capital, he mentioned.
The city mayor came down heavily on the posh area residents, including Gulshan, Baridhara, Banani for desperately polluting surface water of lakes in those areas by connecting their sewage network into lakes.
He questioned how many houses in those posh areas do have septic tanks for wastewater treatment and drainage. They have such arrangements in those areas but in reality they don’t use those.
“Very sorry to say, they have a septic tank in the building design but not in practical. We found 21 houses in Gulshan who instead of using their own septic tanks connected the sewage line directly to Gulshan Lake. Same thing is found in Baridhara.”
30 per cent of total water pollution is blamed for such sewage connections, he mentioned adding that in the capital's Kalyanpur retention pond areas where Japanese companies installed retention pumps were also illegally grabbed.
Out of 173 acres of retention pond 170 acres were already occupied by illegal grabbers, DNCC mayor said in frustration blaming Dhaka WASA for not taking action against the land grabbers, DNCC mayor said adding that water retention pond can solve water logging problem in the city.
Every day the city generates 2,000 tonnes of waste and the city corporation working to run the operation of waste into energy as such a huge quantity of waste could not be dumped into landfill, the mayor added.
He emphasised strict punishment to wrongdoers and rule violators to keep the city clean and environment friendly, giving example of developed countries.
The DNCC has started strict reclaiming operations to restore the water bodies in the city and held a meeting on Wednesday with law enforces and army officials to this end.