The road cleaning is contracted out now and the DCC perhaps feels proud and modern for being able to outsource. However, without being equipped for "managing outsourcing" the jobs being done can be as bad as not being done. I do not have to elaborate at this point.

The DCC and its body, popularly elected, are supposed to provide us the amenities of proper civic life which we can demand also as the highest tax payers of the country. To fulfil its role we have seen the development of the Dhaka Municipality founded by the British Raj in 1864 gradually underwent transformation by amending Local Government Laws and finally it became the Dhaka City Corporation (DCC) in 1994 which is self governed to run the affairs of the city.

DCC, as we know is an administrative entity composed of a clearly defined territory and its population. The area under the corporation is further divided into wards and individual ward has a ward commissioner popularly elected for promised deliveries to the residents.

The responsibilities of the DCC revolves around the amenities a local government authority is to provide to its citizens. These are:

• Safe and accessible roads with pavements for pedestrians, street lighting, etc.
• Waste management.
• Purified water distribution system.
• Public health facilities.
• Programmes/projects for clean and pollution free environment, proper sanitation.
• Community amenities viz: schools, parks, libraries, halls, play ground.
• Facilitating public transit system.
• Public communication.
• Ensuring quality of urban life.

If we look at the lists above we do not find DCC around us and here I limit it only to the streets of Dhaka as capturing of all the areas may be overwhelming.

Majority of the roads have potholes, huge drains have been dug on both sides of the roads in some residential areas and have been left like that which have now turned into sewers and breeding grounds for mosquitoes. These drains have no cover and some of the dwellers have to bear the intolerable toxic odour. The logic to have four feet drains on both sides of the road is not clear.

Ours being a populous city with nearly 12 million people crowding it we miss pavements in most of the roads which acts as a deterrent for pedestrians.

The scenario in the main and commercial areas are worse. I am not sure if there are any zoning law as cars are parked anywhere; one example would suffice: In Gulshan main avenue two well reputed international fast food chains are located. Atrociously, all their customers park the cars on the street causing jam and much inconvenience to the passengers of other vehicles. Numerous other examples can be cited but this is referred to as it is shocking to note that even international chains apparently take advantage of absence or no compliance of regulations.

Hoarding in these streets creates nonsensical landmark. Certainly there is a body authorised to approve the hoardings which come in all sizes and heights and at all locations but do they follow the contents of the hoardings? Some of these are quite insinuating and do not reflect either our lifestyles or values. The international businesses too, when they do their external communication in a local environment customise the language, expression to suit the local values and sentiments and the hoardings that I mentioned belong very much to local businesses.

Often multitude of gas stations/fuel pumps happens to be another nuisance that is adding to the trouble of the passengers, e.g. in Tejgaon-Mohakhali road there are six such pumps (both petrol and CNG) and each of them leads to waiting cars, scooters, buses lined up in huge queues on the streets.

Fearful increase in the number of beggars on the street is a vexing problem and nobody knows who would take charge of keeping away the beggars. The obvious answer is the local government authority, the DCC, has to analyse the demographic pattern of the city it manages. Dhaka has grown and is growing, and before it is too late DCC must recognise that there is the need for more electricity, pure water, access to health services, parks and availability of mass transit system, be it the bus, the underground railway or commuter train.

As DCC does not provide many or all of the services in the wards the residents are subscribing and forming their own neighbourhood associations which collect garbage from the households, often provide street security and also take the privilege of constructing gates on the streets. Can they do it, if so who authorises them? Perhaps fund raising automatically empowers them with the inherent right to do so.

In Uttara a major private transportation company parks all its buses on the main avenue. The worst part is not only the occupying of the street space but that the roads under these buses are all broken and uneven. The authority may think of entering into a partnership with the bus companies as it saves huge amount of money for not having a garage/parking lot of their own and as the roads are used anyway by them. The bus owning companies will take proper care of maintaining those roads -- which will also lead them to impart corporate citizen's responsibility and be a role model for others to follow.

The DCC has its limitations we fully appreciate, but even then do they do the minimum of not only providing the basic services but also looking into the compliance side of it? The DCC can make good use of public communication by having community based meetings with the citizens and invite them to raise issues/ways to resolve them and also for the big businesses/organisations to come up with Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) initiatives.

I would like to end the account of what I see of the Dhaka streets by quoting Charles Kingsley, the famous town planner, that "man is now in a position to conquer and civilise Nature, to master his environment and to lay the foundations of a new society, in which cities would no longer appear as diseased patches soiling the purity of the landscape....." and hope that authorities in DCC will feel accountable to the Dhakaites for electing them and making them the decision makers of DCC and will bring in some quality in our everyday life. It is the public, the people who are and always be the key to success and failures of the elected bodies and they cannot be ignored in any way, can they be?

Shamshia I. Mutasim, an HR Professional, is Executive Vice President working for AB Bank as Head of HRD