The City We Live In: Students join classes and Suffer from garbage stink

The whimsical waste management system of Dhaka City Corporation (DCC) upsets the academic atmospherer of Siddeshwari Girls High School. Students of one of the age-old schools of the city attends classes squeezing their noses as the air of the Bailey Road gets heavy with the stink from the garbage disposed off in front of the school openly.
The sideways have become unusable as DCC dumps garbage on the road regularly. Girls enter into the school walking in zigzag course.
After visiting the place tokais have been seen searching for saleable materials in the pile of garbage. Crows and dogs are found quarrelling for food hidden in the garbage. Some addicts are also seen snoozing on the footpath adjacent to the dumping place.
Fatema Afroz, a guardian of an eighth standard student of the school, alleged to this reporter that it became impossible for the guardians to wait outside the school premises due to heavy stink from the rubbish. “It becomes more painful soon after the school break. Breaks time crowd, heavy traffic on the road and stink from garbage create hell”, she said and added, “We avoid using the footpath as it is occupied by the drug addicts”.
Principal of the school, Mahmuda Begum alleged that students attend classes amid the unbearable stink. “They do classes pressing noses with handkerchief”, she told the New Nation.
In reply to a question she said, “We asked DCC to take necessary steps on the matter over the years. But DCC is yet to take any step.”
The school authority also lodged allegation to the Ramna Thana to clean footpaths from the cluster of drug addicts and temporary tea stalls. But no step has been taken from the thana, she added.
Maksudur Rahman Chowdhury, Chief Conservancy Officer of Zone 5 of DCC said that he was not aware of the matter.
In reply to a question, he asked the reporter to find out a suitable place for dumping. Rajuk developed the city without any plan that is why we have to dump here and there, he said.

Courtesy of The New Nation