Tangail Municipality: Civic amenities a far cry

Important civic amenities like safe drinking water, garbage management still remain a far cry for Tangail municipality dwellers.

Like every previous elections, candidates, vying for different posts, again promised to resolve the woes if they won the elections battle this time.

Established in 1887, the municipality, comprising of 29.43 square-kilometre area, has a population of around two lakh.

But thousands of dwellers of the century-old municipality still remain deprived of their right to safe and pure drinking water.

Moreover, those who have existing connections are not getting pure water as per their demand.

According to the municipality sources, there are currently 7,337 water connections out of a total of 28,000 holding numbers under the municipality.

Of those, around 2,000 connections are currently out of order and once the new water treatment plant starts its operation, the municipality will be able to supply water to 7,000 more holdings.

According to Local Government (Municipality) Act 2009, waste management as well as local environment and protecting citizens' health is equally important responsibility of the municipal authorities.

But the 134-year-old municipality is yet to develop a modern waste management system.

Although, the municipality has 18 wards arrangement of waste collection is available in only 10 wards completely and three more wards partially.

Municipality officials said around 65 to 70 tonnes of waste is being dumped in the municipal area every day while the municipality can remove only 50 to 55 tonnes of those.

The bad odour from the roadside garbage keeps spreading across the area, causing immense sufferings locals, especially pedestrians.

Besides, the Park Market, the main kitchen market in the town, sees no development for the last 33 years and there is no particular drain system for such a large kitchen market.

Currently, there are around 700 permanent and 300 temporary shops in the market.

Traders alleged that though the municipality authorities get a handsome revenue from the leased shops, they are reluctant to conduct any development work of the market.

On the other hand, there is no children park in the municipality area, depriving kids of plying games and proper entertainment.

Twenty seven canals under the municipality area already disappeared thanks to illegal occupation of government land.