Everyone is familiar with the expression that Nero fiddled while Rome burned. While Nero was the emperor of Rome back in 64 AD, a terrible fire, known as the Great Fire of Rome, broke out. Nero was on holiday at the time, away from Rome. Around 500,000 to a million people lost everything in that time. Emperor Nero was a music lover and liked to imagine himself to be a talented musician.
We have emperors like Nero too. Not one, but many. While we are not sure about their musical prowess, there is no doubt about their wanderlust.
On 5 October this year, Rajshahi went under water in the highest rainfall seen in a day over the past 10 years in the country. Rajshahi had won the reputation as most aesthetically pleasing city of Bangladesh, but this city too has been assailed by unplanned urbanisation. This became blatantly obvious in just one day's rain when the city was inundated with water. And at that moment, 26 of Rajshahi city corporation's 40 councillors were all together on a trip in India. They had not taken any permission from the city corporation or the local government ministry, though it is the rule for councillors to do so. While waterlogging and public sufferings had reached a height, our Emperor Neros were holidaying.
According to Prothom Alo reports, as the newly elected mayor hadn't taken over responsibility as yet, a chief executive office is in charge of the overall work of the city corporation. He had no idea of this trip.
The mayor and councillors who had won in the latest election of the city corporation have not taken over responsibilities as yet. The tenure of the officials ended on 11 October. Seven of the 26 councillors touring India lost in the election. According to the rules, there is no scope for them to travel outside the country on official or personal purposes without permission. Yet how could so many people's representatives all go together on this holiday! This is only possible when the people's representatives feel no sense of liability towards the people. They don't even feel accountable to their own institution, authorities or the ministry. Our public administration and people's representatives are thus carrying on with this well-established 'culture'. As if they care whether the people are drowning in water or burning in fire!
It is no secret how Chattogram, the city of natural beauty with its hills, rivers and the ocean, won the disrepute of being the most waterlogged city in the country. Chittagong Development Authority (CDA) was given the responsibility of resolving the waterlogging. A project, 'Alleviating Chattogram City's Waterlogging', was taken up without carrying out any feasibility study. And it is an irrefutable fact that a project means foreign trips for the officials concerned. And so the project's director, deputy director and assistant director took a trip to Brazil, Panama and China. Meanwhile, this hurriedly taken up project's costs have escalated from Tk 55 billion to Tk 85 billion.
Our Emperor Neros continue with their jaunts abroad. And we city citizens languish in hell.
The officials may have visited Panama and China to gain experience, but the city denizens can't even step out of their homes with the slightest of rainfall. The roads turn into "China's sorrow", the river Huang Ho. The project deadline has been extended by three years, in two phases.
CDA projects mean joy trips, says in a report on 3 October in Samakal. The report says that 34 officials have gone on foreign trips regarding various CDC projects, though 23 of them have nothing to do with the project. It is as if this institution constituted to look after the city, has become a travel agency for foreign trips!
A few hours of rain in the evening of 21 September brought the entire capital city to a standstill. Those who had spent the night on the roads that night now quake in fear at the hint of rain. That is no exaggeration. Four persons, three of the same family, were electrocuted in the water-inundated streets. The infant of the family survived. The dead bodies of these electrocuted people lay inert in the water by the road. A video of the scene went viral. Will we ever be able to erase that scene from our minds? The people found no mayor, nor any councillor, by their side in that crisis. The city went under water and our Neros were in deep slumber. They did not ever bother to visit that poor orphaned infant.
Everyone knows the state of dengue in Dhaka city at the moment, people dying, children dying, families being torn apart. Prothom Alo reports that when dengue was taking on alarming proportions last July in Dhaka, with the number of deaths and dengue cases on a steady rise, one of the mayors took off on a personal 17-day vacation with family to Europe. Questions arose about the mayor's family vacation at a time when the city residents were facing such a crisis.
The other mayor, at the start of this year, went on a trip to the US to earn experience about mosquitoes. He went there and learnt first-hand that they had been using outdated and flawed methods of mosquito eradication all these days. He returned with rhetoric on how he would free Dhaka from mosquitoes, but at the end of the day, we are limping along with the same old methods of eradicating mosquitoes. And dengue deaths climb to a record high.
Our Emperor Neros continue with their jaunts abroad. And we city citizens languish in hell.
* Rafsan Galib is editorial assistant at Prothom Alo
* This column appeared in the print and online edition of Prothom Alo and has been rewritten for the English edition by Ayesha Kabir