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Three Chinese companies have submitted a project to the shipping ministry expressing their interest to make the Dhaka Circular Waterway clean and restore the waterway routes around the capital. The project titled “Dhaka Circular Waterway and Water Pollution Treatment Project” will be implemented in the next 15 to 20 years and will cost around RMB 100 million (about Tk 140 crore) excluding land acquisition, sources concerned told The Independent recently.

The government spent around Tk 205 crore in the past 15 years to clean up the capital’s four rivers — Buriganga, Turag, Balu and Shitalakhya. The money was earmarked to dredge the rivers, make those free from pollution, and to remove garbage and construct walkways.

But all the initiatives and the money spent seem to have gone down the drain due to the lack of political will and monitoring by the authorities concerned.

The main objective of the projects was to introduce circular waterway around Dhaka to reduce vehicular pressure on city streets and ease traffic congestion.

The movement of vessels on the circular waterway around the city is hampered due to the construction of 14 low-height bridges at different places. The departments concerned also did not take any initiative to reconstruct these low-height bridges.

Even Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina’s directive in this regard was being ignored by the authorities concerned, according to sources.

On July 27, 2014, the PM had directed the authorities concerned to reconstruct or re-install the 14 low bridges on Balu, Turag, Buriganga, Pungli and Bongshi rivers without delay in order to make the circular waterway routes around the city viable. Against this backdrop, the Chinese companies -- China National Machinery Import Export Corporation, Changjiang Nanjing Waterway Bureau and Huadong Engineering Corporation Limited --- recently submitted the project to the shipping ministry.

According to the project proposal, the Chinese companies have primarily calculated that excluding land acquisition, around RMB 100 million (about Tk 140 crore) will be needed to complete the project within a time span of 15 to 20 years.

The project proposes a systematic implementation for developing Dhaka’s 113.5 km circular waterway and water environment treatment.

It will include the construction of circular waterway, channel dredging, water diversion engineering, revetment footpath and landscape, port terminal engineering, construction of water environment treatment including the urban pipe network, garbage and sewage treatment plant.

According to a research, the capital suffers a loss of Tk 370 billion per year

due to traffic congestion. As per a World Bank report in 2017, Dhaka residents waste 3.8 million hours of work each year due to traffic congestions. Many passengers take the city’s land transportation rather than water transportation to avoid pollution, which has greatly reduced the current water traffic flow, and aggravated the city’s already overwhelmed traffic.

Sources said there was urgent need to improve the water quality of the city’s rivers as the Dhaka circular waterway was threatened with serious pollution, and this has also significantly affected residents’ drinking water, travel safety, urban development and ecological security.

Dhaka produces approximately 4,624 tonnes of solid waste per day, and only about 50 per cent of the waste is collected and dumped at the landfill. The rest is dumped by people at unapproved sites and water bodies. It is expected that by 2025, the waste generation rate will increase to 0.6 kg per person per day, the report stated.

The daily domestic sewage discharge volume in Dhaka is about 1.8 million cubic metre, the project proposal stated citing reports.

As per the proposal, domestic sewage of all areas was collected through pipe network and it was discharged to the water bodies after being treated at the sewage treatment plant to achieve discharge standards.

Engineering, Procurement and Construction (EPC) shall cooperate with the Bangladesh government, and the ‘project company’ will approach the Chinese government for G-to-G loan. The government will benefit economically and the city dwellers too will get a healthy environment, clean water, pollution free city rivers, beautiful circular waterway and modern sewage treatment plants after implementation of the project.

“We are trying to operate the circular waterway fully. There is a need for coordination among the various departments and ministries,” state minister for shipping Khalid Mahmud Chowdhury told The Independent.

The minister said the government wanted to see a visible development of the city’s circular waterway. “Many departments under the ministry are working hard to eliminate irregularities. We have already evicted many illegal structures from the river banks of Buriganga and Turag. The eviction drive is continuing,” he added.

People living near the Buriganga River cannot use its water even during peak flow in monsoon because the colour of the water remains black due to heavy pollution. The Buriganga is being polluted at 138 different points. Besides, people are also dumping garbage directly into the river.

The circular waterway phase-2 project around Dhaka was completed on June 30, 2017 at a cost of Tk 65 crore. But it is yet to become functional even after the completion of the second phase of dredging, officials of the Bangladesh Inland Water Transport Authority (BIWTA) told The Independent.

The first phase was completed during the reign of the BNP-led four-party alliance at a cost of Tk 42 crore. It included the construction of 11 landing stations, but most of them remained unused. Some of them, however, were refurbished for use when the water bus service was introduced on August 28, 2010.

Besides, the BIWTA also spent Tk 13.72 crore to remove 7.25 lakh cubic metres of garbage from the three-and-a-half kilometre stretch of the Buriganga and its tributary Turag under the “Removal of Garbage and Polythene” project to keep the city’s rivers clean so that they can be used as waterways. Earlier, the BIWTA had identified 14 low bridges between Ashulia and Kanchpur that were major obstacles to the circular waterway. They include the Ashulia Dour Bridge, Kamarpara Bridge, Tongi Bridge, Tongi Railway Bridges I and II, and Birulia Bridge on the Turag.