Dhaka: Dhaka North City Mayor Annisul Huq on Tuesday said Dhaka will be turned into a smart city within the next three years as the city corporation authorities are working hard to make it a clean, safe and traffic congestion-free one.

He said they in their election manifestos in 2015 promised to build Dhaka a clean, safe, green, and traffic congestion-free smart digital city in their five-year tenure.

‘We’re working in every sector to live up to our promises. In fact, Dhaka is changing fast. ‘It’ll not take five years rather; you’ll see a different city within four years (of the tenure),’ he said.

Annisul was addressing the launching event of a digital application titled ‘Nogor’ of the DNCC at the city’s Krishibid Institution Bangladesh.  

The DNCC launched the mobile app ‘Nogor’ to receive complaints and opinions from the city dwellers about their problems and sufferings related to city’s road, street lamps, wastage, drainage, mosquito, illegal occupation, bride and corruption.

The DNCC mayor said people will get a different Uttara at the end of this August as 29,000 trees are being planted there. Of the trees, 7,100 have already been planted. Some 200 people are now working to make ‘Green Uttara’.  

He said he has a plan to plant five lakh trees in entire Dhaka within the next three years.

Noting that there has been a marked improvement in the city’s wastage management, Annisul said at least 80 percent of big piles of wastage have already been removed from the city’s streets. Some 60 large secondary transfer stations of wastage have been installed. ‘The wastage management will see a radical improvement within just next 30 days.’  

He said the DNCC imported electric streetlights from Europe as the existing LED lamps cause harm to eyes.  

The DNCC mayor said the Prime Minister is providing adequate fund for the development of his city corporation. ‘Fund is no longer a problem.’

Inaugurating the Nogor app, LGRD and Cooperative Minister Khandker Mosharraf Hossain said the size of Dhaka has recently got almost double as more 16 Union Parishads came under the capital’s two city corporations.

‘Now flushing out rainwater is going to be a big challenge for us,’ he said adding that if it rains only for an hour to one and half of an hour, many areas in the city go under knee-deep water.

The government is preparing a big master plan to address the water-logging problem. The rivers surrounding the capital will be dredged and a comprehensive drainage scheme will be put in place, the minister said.