BANGLADESH

The government has moved to evict hawkers and remove banners, festoons, posters and billboards from footbridges and underpasses in Dhaka City to ensure safe roads.

The Ministry of Local Government, Rural Development and Cooperatives on Wednesday directed the authorities of Dhaka City Corporation (North) and Dhaka City Corporation (South) to remove banners, posters and festoons.

State Minister for Local Government Jahangir Kabir Nanak told bdnews24.com on the evening, "The chief executives of the two city corporations have been given directives. They've also informed me that on getting the directives, they asked the officials concerned to take measures to this effect."

The junior minister said the foot-over bridges encroached upon by hawkers make it difficult for the pedestrians to move on the bridge. Pedestrians avoid most of the foot-over bridges and underpasses since billboards and banners leave them dark. As a result, muggers, bag-snatchers and pickpockets enjoy thrive in those places.

According to the Local Government Division and the Dhaka City Corporations, there are currently 52 foot-over bridges in the city while eight more under construction.

Of the three foot-underpasses built in the busiest areas in the city to facilitate movement of pedestrians, barring the one in Karwan Bazar, the two others have become unusable. Security risk, shabby environment and dark underground path in the city subways discourage people from taking them.

Hawkers have taken their control of the two other foot-overpasses at Gabtoli and Gulistan. The makeshift shops installed by the hawkers and presence of beggars add to the sufferings of the daily commuters.

As both sides of most of the foot-over bridges in the city remain covered with billboards, banners, festoons and posters, hawkers occupy the foot-over bridges during the daytime and at night-time, muggers and prostitutes prowl around.

The government has not been fully successful in previous attempts to rid the foot-over bridges of banners and billboards.

Nanak said this time the government will strictly monitor the eviction drive begun from Wednesday.

People have started coming back into the capital after spending a long vacation.

But there was no traffic rush on the city streets on Wednesday and crowds of people were mostly seen in the bus and ferry terminals and railway stations.

Mohammad Mahmud, Traffic Inspector of Bangladesh Inland Water Transport Authority (BIWTA), told bdnews24.com that 50 passenger launches reached Sadarghat ferry terminal from the southern districts while only 12 launches left Dhaka on Wednesday.

He added the outbound launches were crowded but the flow of passengers in the incoming ones was mostly normal. However, the pressure of passengers coming to Dhaka will go up in the next couple of days.

This year, government and private employees enjoyed a weeklong holiday on the occasion of Eid, National Mourning Day, Shab-e-Qadr and weekends.

The government, semi- government and private offices, banks and other institutions reopened on Wednesday after the extended weeklong holiday. But attendance of employees in the offices was thin as thousands of people who streamed out of the capital are yet to return.

It is believed that the city will be brimming with residents from Sunday.

Railway's Transportation Officer (Dhaka zone) M Salahuddin said that 14 trains reached Kamalapur Railway Station from other parts of the country on Wednesday.

Nurul Islam Nuru, Manager of Ilish Paribahan at Sayedabad bus terminal, told bdnews24.com that holidaymakers already started flocking back to the capital.

"The pressure of passengers will rise on Saturday and Sunday," he added.

A 12-year-old boy from Moheshkhali drowned at Cox's Bazar sea beach on Wednesday.

Mohammad Sohel, son of Shamsul Alam from Amtoli village, had come to the resort town with his cousin Saiful Islam aged 12 years, too, to spend Eid holiday with their aunt's family at Bharuakhali, Saiful told bdnews24.com.

They went to the beach's Laboni Point along with their cousin (aunt's son) Mohammad Faisal f same age in the afternoon.

"We were taking pictures. Suddenly Sohel ran into the sea. When he was drowning, Faisal and I went to rescue him," Saiful said.

"All of us were downing then. Lifeguards rescued the two of us at once but Sohel was found after a long time," he added.

"The boy (Sohel) went to swim with a tube but drowned when the tube turned over around 3pm," Robi Lifeguard Director Syed Noor said.

He was rescued after around half an hour and rushed to a hospital where the doctor declared him dead, he said.

The lifeguards rescued at least 14 tourists on Wednesday, he said. One of them, 'Rubel', was admitted to the Cox's Bazar Sadar Hospital, he added.

Yasir Lifeguard Director Mostafa Kamal said they rescued at least 20 tourists throughout the day.

Dhaka is the second most vulnerable city to serious flooding among nine coastal cities around the world and will remain so until 2100 unless measures to counter the threat are taken, suggests an international study.

The finding is the result of a new method developed by a team of researchers from the Netherlands and the University of Leeds for assessing flood vulnerability. The team also developed a Coastal City Flood Vulnerability Index (CCFVI) based on exposure, susceptibility and resilience to coastal flooding.

Dhaka sits only 4 metres above the current sea level and is regularly hit by tropical cyclones and floods and yet it has few defences in place and little resilience, the study says.

While evaluating a city's physical attributes, the study also considers social and economic factors as they prepared the rating using 19 indicators.

According to the rating, the Chinese city Shanghai is considered the most exposed to the risk of flooding. Shanghai is particularly vulnerable because it is exposed to powerful storm surges and the land is subsiding as sea levels rise.

The rest of the rating order is Kolkata (India) and Manila (Philippines), Casablanca (Morocco), Rotterdam (Netherlands), Buenos Aires (Argentina) and Marseille (France), and Osaka (Japan).

The cities were picked up as these are built on river deltas.

The social vulnerability to floods of Shanghai, Dhaka and Manila will double by 2100, it says.

"The population close to the coastline and the number of cultural heritages exposed to floods will increase, so there is an urgent need for action towards adaptation measures by raising the anticipatory mentality of local population," finds the research that has appeared in the European journal Natural Hazards.

The analysis, the journal reports, reveals that the highly prosperous megapolis of Shanghai is more vulnerable than much poorer cities such as Dhaka,

Nigel Wright, from the University of Leeds' School of Civil Engineering, who led the study, said, "Vulnerability is a complex issue."

"It is not just about your exposure to flooding, but the effect it actually has on communities and business and how much a major flood disrupts economic activity," he added, according to a university statement.

He told BBC News current methods to determine vulnerability to flooding tends to be two dimensional.

"Very often we look at these sorts of things in a very deterministic way," he explained.

"We still use the physical ones but also economic and social ones, such as how much attention is given by local or national governments to protect citizens and citizens' property through investing in various forms of resilience," he added.

These included the percentage of a city's population living close to the coastline; the amount of time needed for a city to recover from flooding; the amount of uncontrolled development along the coastline, as well as the volume of measures to physically prevent floodwater entering a city.

The indicators that led to the measurement include measures of the level of economic activity in a city, its speed of recovery, and social issues such as the number of flood shelters, the awareness of people about flood risks, and the number of disabled people in the population.

"Our index looks at how cities are prepared for the worst — for example, do they have flood defences, do they have buildings that are easy to clean up and repair after the flood? It is important to know how quickly a city can recover from a major flood," Wright said.

Mohammad Abdul Qayyum, National Project Director of the government's Comprehensive Disaster Management Programme, however, ruled out the risk of coastal flooding in Dhaka.

"I did not see the study, but if they are talking about the risk of coastal flooding, then I'll say 'no'," he told bdnews24.com.

"Dhaka is not a coastal area. It has the risk of urban flooding."

Qayyum said as a country Bangladesh had the greatest risk of flooding. "But if I pinpoint an area of the country, then Dhaka is not the most at-risk city."

"We have mechanisms to identify the flood vulnerability even of a small village," he said.

The Project Director explained: "Dhaka is very much susceptible to urban flooding and even monsoon floods may enter from the eastern side as about 50 percent area is not protected by embankment."

He attributed unplanned urbanisation and lack of proper drainage system to the risk of Dhaka's urban flooding.