New townships must have adequate water bodies: PM

Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina today asked city planners to keep spaces for adequate water bodies and reservoirs for new townships for environmental reasons and combating disasters like outbreak of fire.

"Whenever any new township would be built, there should be enough water bodies and reservoirs so water is available in case of any fire incident," she told a meeting relating to planning on the newly-established Mymensingh division at her office this morning.

The premier said the planners must keep in mind the issues of water logging and healthy environment while sketching their blueprints.

Sheikh Hasina said that she already issued specific and identical directives to authorities concerned in establishing countrywide economic zones and any township.

Citing the example of fire incident in the city's Bashundhara City Shopping Complex few years back, she said that the fire fighters had to bring water from the Sonargaon Hotel swimming pool to douse the blaze.

"Shall our future should only be stuck into swimming pools?" she said adding that all future residential areas must have lakes or ponds to preserve rainwater as the safest water and important natural resource."

Members of the cabinet who hailed from Mymensingh region and concerned officials were present at the meeting when the premier asked development planners to be farsighted in outlining blueprints.

In her introductory remarks at a meeting, Sheikh Hasina asked them to take into their thoughts to long-term context of structural works to avert future complexities.

"We have a stereotyped mindset of thinking about the present context, but we will have to garner farsighted and transparent thinking to avert future complexities," she said.

The premier added: "While undertaking any plan, we will have to consider what would be the population in the next 20 to 25 years, what would be the extent of economic activities and our needs at that time."

The prime minister said the national population now stood at 16 crore, a scenario that warrant more decentralisation of authoritative centres to reach services to the common people.

She said that Dhaka was a big division earlier with 17 districts while it was trimmed down with the creation of new division in Mymensingh.

The primer hinted that the central Dhaka division was likely to be sliced further in future.

The premier said that soon after the independence, Father of the Nation Bangabandhu Sheikh Mujibur Rahman initiated a process for turning all sub-divisions into districts to provide more services to the people through decentralization of power.

"Bangladesh could have been established as a hunger and poverty-free country much ahead had Bangabandhu been alive," she added.