Experts suggest taking effective steps
Academics and disaster experts on Wednesday underscored the need for taking effective steps to tackle manmade and natural disasters in the Dhaka city as the city is exposed to a wide variety of risks.
The seminar, styled ‘Making cities disaster resilient: the state of Dhaka city’ and held at the university senate building, was organised by Dhaka University geography and environment department in association with the Swiss Agency for Development and Cooperation marking International Day for Disaster Risk Reduction.
Presiding over the seminar, geography and environment department professor AQM Mahbub, who presented the keynote paper, said, ‘According to the ‘Cities in a Globalising World 2001:UN’ survey, the population growth rate of the Dhaka city was the highest among the SAARC mega cities, with a 3.2 per cent average population growth rate from 2005 to 2015.’
He urged the government to adopt appropriate control policy that includes diversion of Dhaka city-bound migrants, strengthening migration substitute by decentralising industries, commerce, health and education and undertaking rural development policy.
Attending the programme as chief guest, Dhaka University vice-chancellor AAMS Arefin Siddique upheld the university’s role in building up resilience against urban disaster across the country and also underscored the role of media in this regard.
Speaking on the occasion, Farid Hasan Ahmed, senior programme officer of SDC, said high density of population, narrow roads, decline in wetlands, open spaces and parks, traffic congestion and poor access to transport, increasing environmental degradation, use of mixed lands, weak governance and poor preparedness exposed the city to major threats of disasters.
He also cited the ‘Slums of Urban Bangladesh Mapping and Census 2005’ that found that of 37.4 per cent of the total population of the city is slum dwellers.
Other discussants also made some recommendations that include adopting a friendly policy for urban poor and slum dwellers, undertaking urban renewal programme for older part of the city, enforcing building code, strengthening disaster management institutions.
SDC Regional Disaster Risk Reduction coordinator Matthias Anderegg was also present at the seminar also attended by other distinguished guests.
