Persistent rainfall has left many roads and alleys across Dhaka submerged. In Naya Paltan, the water has risen to waist height on the main road.
The central office of the ruling party, the BNP, is located on this road, and floodwater has entered the ground floor of the building.
A visit to the area on Sunday morning showed water flowing over the footpath and pooling around the stairs leading to the BNP office. The party’s senior joint secretary general, Ruhul Kabir Rizvi, arrived at the office in the morning. When he left around noon, a rickshaw had to be brought inside the office premises so he could cross the floodwater.
Rizvi had come to the party office from his residence in the morning. He held a press conference to announce the BNP’s mourning programme following the death of National Standing Committee member Barrister Jamiruddin Sircar. Other party leaders, including Joint Secretaries General Habib Un Nabi Khan Sohel and Abdus Salam Azad, Executive Committee member Abdus Sattar Patwari, and Professor Aminul Islam, were also seen wading through floodwater to reach the office.
Sohail Mahmud, a member of the Dhaka University unit of the Jatiotabadi Chatra Dal, said: “The water on Naya Paltan Road has risen so much that the entire road is submerged. Even motorised vehicles cannot operate because water enters their engines and causes them to stall.”
Shamim, an employee at the BNP office, said: “Heavy rainfall continued through the night. Water began accumulating on Paltan Road early in the morning. Before 9am, the stretch from the Fakirapul intersection to Kakrail looked almost like Cox’s Bazar beach, with waves of water splashing into the party office.”
“I was at the office, and several of our colleagues had to wade through water to get inside,” he added.
By 10am, roads in Bijoynagar, Kakrail, Fakirapool, Shantinagar, and Malibagh had become waterlogged. On the first working day of the week, office workers, businesspeople, students, and pedestrians faced severe hardship.
Sulaiman, a sanitation worker in Bijoynagar, said, “When I came to work in the morning, I found the streets flooded. Collecting household waste while wading through water has become extremely difficult. The rainfall was especially heavy in the morning, so garbage collection has been disrupted.”
“There are still many houses where waste has not been collected. On a normal day, we finish by noon, but now it is already 2pm, and we have not completed our work.”
Both sides of Naya Paltan Road are lined with car showrooms and shopping centres, and floodwater has entered many of the shops.
Anwarul Alam Khan, a resident of Bijoynagar, said, “I got completely soaked while trying to go to the office this morning. I had to return home, change my clothes, and set out again.”
“There is so much water on the roads that neither rickshaws nor auto-rickshaws are operating. You can see CNG-run auto-rickshaws and small private cars stranded at different points on Naya Paltan Road because water has entered their engines. The situation is extremely inconvenient.”
He added, “Whenever it rains heavily for just half a day, areas such as Malibagh, Kakrail, Shantinagar, and Naya Paltan go underwater. This is not a new problem. I think the government should address this issue urgently.”
“If the capital remains submerged, how can the country function?”
