Brisk business thru' waste collection

A million-taka business is generated through garbage collection from the city houses. Awami League and its wings are directly involved in the businesses in localities.

The party men are doing the garbage business by forming associations to throw out the destitute people, who used to collect the wastages individually.

The influential quarters dominate the aristocratic residential areas like Mirpur, Dhanmondi, Gulshan and Mohammadpur.
The associations appoint workers to collect trashes from flats for which each of the flat owners has to pay Tk 50 to 70 per month (it varies in different areas).

According to the data of Dhaka City Corporation, there are 511 garbage containers in different areas of Dhaka city.
Workers collect garbage in rickshaw-vans and each of the van goes to least 100 flats. 20 vans unload their garbage in a container.

So it has been seen that at least 10,220 vans carry wastages of the whole city and put in the containers provided by the City Corporation.
If the flat owners pay an average of Tk 60 for the waste collection then the income of the association is Tk 6crore 13 lakh 20 thousand per month.

But the association has to pay the workers' union of the City Corporation Tk 300 for every van.
According to this amount the association pays Tk 30 lakh 66 thousand every month for the waste collection. The City Corporation did not impose any rule of paying money in exchange of waste collection.

Even the corporation did not appoint anyone for collecting money for the service.

According to the rules of City Corporation, if anyone wants to collect the garbage he has to seek approval from the corporation. But the associations, which are now operating in the city, could not show any approval from City Corporation.

Badal, manager of an association at Senpara in Mirpur, said, "I am paying City Corporation every month for the business." But the corporation said they did not know about the business.
Dhaka South City Corporation assistant chief garbage management officer AHM Abdullah Harun told Prothom Alo, "It is every citizen's duty to leave household wastes in the dustbin. But they do not do that; they employ other people to do this. We give approval to those people for the sake of the city dwellers."