The commitments of the authorities concerned to restore and develop the city’s ponds still remain unfulfilled. The capital city of Dhaka continued to lose most of it, ponds in the last three decades due to negligence and lack of supervision, construction of structures, unauthorised occupying and pollution.
Ponds are disappearing fast from the city’s map due to unabated grabbing. There is no specific data about the exact number of ponds in the city in the past. However, the River and Delta Research Centre study found existence of 241 ponds in the city.
Most of the ponds are owned by the private organisations or individual. But the number of those ponds continued dwindling due to filling up for construction of various buildings and other infrastructures. According to the Bangladesh Environment Conservation Act, 1995, no one would be allowed to fill up the ponds whether they would be owned by private or public ones.
Ponds are disappearing
fast from the city’s map
due to unabated grabbing
Apart from the individual-owned ponds, Dhaka South City Corporation, Dhaka North City Corporation and Rajdhani Unnayan Kartripakkha have not taken any effective initiative to save the state-owned ponds. All know the water bodies and ponds are very important for a city like the capital Dhaka. As surface water level has been dropping at an alarming rate, dependence on groundwater has increased in the last couple of years. Monsoon rain submerges different areas of Dhaka city every year, creating serious waterlogging as most of the ponds, canals and water bodies around it have disappeared from its map.
So, the two city corporations and Rajuk will have to conserve ponds to retain its surface water for protecting the environment for further degradation. Besides, excavation and re-excavation, banks of ponds be made concrete.
The authorities concerned must take immediate steps to restore old ponds at various places in city to their original state after freeing them from grabbers. It will also have to make sure that no pond in city gets encroached upon or filled up again. No effective action was taken even though influential people had occupied and encroached on the ponds in city under the vey nose of the administration. The authorities concerned are bound to protect and preserve the ponds following the Constitution and the Environmental Conservation Act and take action against the encroachment on ponds in the capital Dhaka.
