Illegal establishments, including half-brick houses, tea stalls, rickshaw garage and steel mills, have been set up on most of the pump house premises of the Dhaka Water Supply and Sewerage Authority. City dwellers have blamed negligence of DWASA whereas DWASA held responsible influential people for establishing the illegal establishments at the DWASA pumps.During visit, shops, shanties, rickshaw garage, political party offices and factories were seen occupying most of the DWASA pump areas.
Almost 10 families were seen residing in the land of DWASA Bijoynagar pump.
A tenant claimed that they were all DWASA staff though they were reluctant to allow anybody in the pump house and disclose their identity.
Tea stalls and different houses were seen to grab a big portion of DWASA circuit house area pump premises which is under modes zone 6.
Outsider have set up shops at Nilkhet pump house whereas at Pallabi Duari camp pump house there are shanties and a rickshaw garage while the picture of Narinda pump house is almost the same.
Housing, vegetation, and tea stalls have been set up on the Agargaon pump premises of DWASA.
A re-rolling mill, Baset Re-rolling Mill, has been established on Shyampur DWASA pump premises.
DWASA magistrate Kazi Wasiudin said that during the interim government they had fined the mill owner for occupying DWASA land illegally.
He said at that time that DWASA evicted the illegal occupants from different pumps including Asadgate, Mirpur 10, Duaripara, Mohammadpur pump premises.
Jahirul, a resident of Agargaon, said DWASA officials lacked monitoring and maintenance of these pumps.
He said that DWASA provides a service to the city dwellers through these pumps where expensive machines have been set up but these establishments are the least taken care of.
However, DWASA officials seeking anonymity told New Age that with the help of some DWASA employees and local influential people some outsiders have set up illegal establishments at DWASA pumps.
They said two power lines are used in these pump houses so that they never face power crisis and DWASA pay the power bill of pumps while these people living on the pump premises do not have pay any bill.
DWASA modes zone 1 executive engineer Md Azizul Haque told New Age that at present DWASA have 644 pump houses under 11 zones of which 10 situated in Dhaka city and 1 in Narayanganj.
There is an office for each zone and this office carries out the responsibility of engineering operation as well as revenue activities to serve the consumers, said Azizul.
He said that mz-1 include Motijhil, Kamalapur, Dhalpur, Maniknagar, Manda, Basabo, Mugda, Jatrabari and surrounding areas.
DWASA superintending engineer Md Zaki Mostafa Chowdhury said at least 2-3 acres of land is used for modes zone office where there is a tube-well, pump machine, generator or sub-station, transformer, operators room, toilet etc.
He said they would soon take action against these illegal occupants.
Courtesy of New Age
