While there is enough hardware to ensure civic amenities in the village, there is a software crisis. That is why people are moving from villages to cities despite digital connectivity. Deputy Minister of Education Muhibul Hasan Chowdhury Naufel said that this trend can be stopped by decentralizing the administration of digital power.
For this reason, State Minister for Disaster and Relief Dr. Enamur Rahman believes that through the implementation of the far-reaching ‘Gram Hobe Shahar’ (Villages will turn into Cities) plan, the return of people from slum cities to villages will be reduced by the middle of 2041.
Rashed Khan Menon, Member of Parliament of Dhaka 8 Constituency, strongly demanded inclusion of grass-root planners including professors in the formulation of sustainable plans.
The speakers presented these views in a round table meeting held in Gulshan of the capital on Tuesday. Bangabandhu’s urban vision and Bangladesh 2041; this meeting was held on dreams, possibilities and implementation.
The meeting organized by Bangladesh Institute of Planners was presided over by Fazle Reza Sumon, the president of the organization. About 12 members of Parliament under the supervision of General Secretary Sheikh Mohammad Mehdi Hasan.
While addressing as the chief guest at the event, Dhaka South City Mayor Fazle Noor Tapos said that the Prime Minister has taken various initiatives to ease the pressure on Dhaka. As a result, all the needs are now fulfilled in Dhaka. Apart from detailed regional planning, RAJUK could not make any significant contribution. And now there is an opportunity to get the quality education of Viquaarunnisa Noon School and Dhaka University online.
In this regard, the city Mayor urged to increase the number of urban planners and bring them to the leadership of development. He said, “I think there is no alternative to planning. The first thing to do is plan. First, integrated planning should be done and integrated development should be done to implement that plan. If we can do this, then we will be able to deliver the benefits of that development to the people. But service providers are only doing project based development. Maybe we can give some benefit in this.”
Citing some examples of the lack of coordinated planning, Mayor Barrister Sheikh Tapas said, “I have said since taking charge, we have to coordinate with you (other service providers) and do it at the planning stage. After taking a lot of drastic measures, we have now started reaping some results. Following that, the project manager of MRT along with their foreign consultant sat in a meeting with me I asked the foreign consultant about the number of passengers on that route, passenger demand assessment, economic viability of this route etc. Then the foreign consultant frankly admitted — none of these were in his feasibility study. Their feasibility has been verified in speculative thinking based only on speculation.”
At this time, Fazle Noor Tapas wants allocation for welfare plan from the national budget. Mentioning that urbanization is not the same as housing, he called for integrated initiatives and said that urban decentralization will be successful if satellite cities are made.