Every other day, it seems like, there is some news story in The Daily Star that makes us shake our heads in disbelief and think, “where are we?” I keep thinking that nothing will top the current story for sheer absurdity but inevitably another story comes along that’s even crazier. I’ve decided to share some of the highlights.
Several weeks ago there was an article about sewage treatment in Dhaka. The article was based on an interview with one of the head officials at WASA, the local water supply and sewage treatment company. According to the WASA guy, WASA has the capacity to treat one-third of the sewage produced in the city. However they are currently only operating at half-capacity because a vast number of home and building owners prefer to connect their sewage lines directly to the city’s storm drains in order to avoid paying a sewer bill. This means that only one-sixth of the shit from a city of 15 million people is getting treated, which means that the shit from 12.5 million people is going straight into the rivers that run through Dhaka. Gross!!
It also means that the shit from 12.5 million people is flowing through the storm drains. When it rains, especially in our neighborhood, the drains overflow and flood the streets. The water can frequently be over a foot deep in several places between our home and the local markets. And what are you walking through if you have to walk through that water? The shit from 12.5 million people!!! Argggg!!!! Naturally we take rickshaws as much as possible when it rains.
On a related note, there was another article about pollution in Dhaka’s rivers on June 15. It was titled Rivers void of life forms. There are three rivers that flow around Dhaka, the Buriganga, the Turag, and the Norai. The article reports that a recent three-year research project found that basically nothing lives in these rivers. It said that when the monsoon comes and the water flow increases on account of the rains, then “some invertebrates and small organisms come into being…But these life forms completely disappear in the dry season…” Bummer man.
Another common theme in the Daily Star is ‘corruption.’ Recently an article caught my eye titled Bridge built without approach road. It’s about a bridge that is being built under the supervision of the Local Government Engineering Department (LGED) on the Shibu River in the Rajshahi district. The construction company doing the work, which is owned by the vice-president of the Rajshahi chapter of the Bangladesh National Party (BNP), was awarded 39,200,000 taka (about $580,000) for the project despite the fact that neither they nor the LGED owned any land around the bridge site on which to build an access road. The article was mainly about the details of this one case, but it mentions 20 other bridges that were built during this particular BNP coalition rule that are still unusable. The article concludes by saying, “the number of unusable bridges is 600 in Rajshahi division. Contractors, chosen allegedly at the behest of former ministers and lawmakers, have reportedly withdrawn all the money for the constructions.” The organization and prose in this article, which is typical of The Daily Star, leave me somewhat skeptical and confused as to the actual facts, but it seems pretty weird to build 600 bridges and no roads – and this is just in one district!
A third theme that appears practically every day in The Daily Star is the ‘mob beating’ which usually results in the death of several people. An article from June 13 serves as an example. It was titled, 8 bandits beaten to death in Natore with the subheading one shot dead during Rab-robber gunfight (Rab stands for rapid action battalion. They are the elite military branch that has carried out numerous assassinations over the past two years.) The highlights are as follows:
The incident occurred around 1:30 am when the gang of at least 13 gathered on Adimpur Primary School ground prior to launching an attack on the village…But more than 100 villagers were lying in wait for them around the field with the gang oblivious…The villagers chased the gang and a few of them managed to flee while most jumped into a pond, finding no escape route, on the northern part of the school compound. The villagers encircled the pond as announcements were made through loudspeakers of mosques alerting other villagers about the criminals. The gang opened fire on the villagers in a bid to scare their way out of the situation. Rab personnel tried to negotiate their surrender but the criminals kept on firing forcing Rab to retaliate…The criminals later ran out of ammunition and the law enforcers asked villagers to get the criminals out of the pond. The villagers got them out of the pond, took them to the school ground and gave them a mass beating. Six of them died on the spot and the law enforcers were able to rescue two of them but they died on their way to Singra Health Complex…The body of the other criminal was found in the pond with a bullet wound in the head…
These articles typically refer to the people beaten as ‘robbers’, ‘bandits’, or ‘criminals’ and never mention any charges being levied against the ones doing the beating. As in this example, the scenario is usually something like this: criminal observed being a criminal, someone gets on the horn at the local mosque, a chase ensues, one or more criminals are beaten to death by the mob, end of story. And it happens every day. Sometimes there are several articles like this in a day. I would really like to know how the number of people beaten to death by mobs in Bangladesh every year compares to the number killed by handguns in the US. If anyone can answer this, let me know.
Finally, in the category of sheer absurdity, one of our friends pointed out an article last night at dinner about the international airport in Chittagong. It needs to be read almost verbatim to be fully appreciated. The title was Ctg airport faces risk as fire tenders out of order.
Aircrafts are facing serious risks while landing at or taking off from Shah Amanat International Airport (SAIA) in Chittagong since all the airport’s three fire-fighting vehicles have been unserviceable for about two months. Airport authorities have made arrangements with the fire service stations in Chittagong city for sending fire-fighting vehicles daily to attend aircraft landing and takeoff. But the authorities often have to advise planes awaiting landing to fly slow or hover in the sky when fire-fighting vehicles delay in reaching the airport…Airline officials fear that if the international aviation watchdogs come to know about this situation at the SAIA, they might downgrade it from its present status of an international airport. According to rules, the presence of fire-fighting vehicles at an airport is a must at the time of aircraft’s landing and take-off. On June 12, the pilot of an aircraft of Biman Bangladesh Airlines landed the plane at the airport at his own risk after hovering in the sky for about 40 minutes although fire fighters had not yet arrived…”We ask pilots to fly slow or hover in the sky when fire-fighting vehicles arrive late or when an aircraft arrives before its scheduled time,” a high official of the SAIA told The Daily Star seeking anonymity. He, however, initially declined to provide any information, saying as a government official he cannot give journalists any such information…
Vehicles out of service for two months? Fly slow? Hover? What more can I say…?
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