This one is for my former Council colleagues

Sorry to friends and family who have no interest whatsoever in Council services, this one is for my old colleagues at Marrickville Council...

I have been quite astounded to see that Dhaka (or at least around where I live) has a visible focus on waste recycling and health promotion, food and other safety, however, this of course is done in a very unique fashion.

My home is supplied with green, red, yellow and blue bins for different types of rubbish.  The sign on the left is prominent in various places around the area.  However, when I take my bins down stairs to empty into the bigger colored bins, no one seems to have taken note of these instructions and all the rubbish is lumped together.

OOps, I guess this wasn't NOW or YOU.

What really happens with the rubbish is that a rickshaw driver with a small bin on the back of his rickshaw rocks up to our apartment building every few days and collects it all.  It then is taken to a larger bin (left) or main road (below) where a number of unfortunate people sort it all out by hand (ugh) but it actually does get recycled to a fairly high extent.  Jeff tell your staff how lucky they are!  Workplace health and safety doesn't appear to be a common concern here and the workers are in the rubbish with bare feet and hands.

When we were out on our river boat trip we stopped at a village and had to walk through a whole lot of brown sheets lying on the ground, we found out that these are sheets of cardboard made from recycled paper that had just been made and were drying.  They will get used to make shoe boxes etc (below right).  We were also told that any paper you throw out might get made into shopping bags so be careful about any confidential material as patient hospital records etc turn up on these...

Dhaka actually has quite a bit of greenery and many of the streets are lined with trees and / or have trees in the centre strip.  Many of these seem to be funded by the banks as a ''goodwill'' gesture.  There are a number of local parks, which in our area are funded by the Baridhara Society and are only open for a few hours each day.  They are manned by a guard but I am not sure whether they keep anyone out or just maintain safety (and give someone a job).  They have signs in them encouraging people (especially women) to walk and to stay healthy.   I walk everywhere and the locals find that a bit unusual as anyone with money gets driven by a driver or a rickshaw and so they don't understand why a white woman would walk.

 Stormwater drainage is a major issue because the whole of Bangladesh is very flat and at sea level.  At the moment a lot of the outlying areas around Dhaka are flooded and many people have lost their businesses and are surviving each day ankle deep in water.   In the city the drains are always blocked because of the rubbish (below).  In our area they get cleaned out regularly but littering is rife as there are no or few bins for people to use.

 And food safety....   Chicken for dinner anyone (Simon would have his work cut out in Dhaka).  Although I believe these chickens would have been free range.  Formalin in food is a major risk and I have been warned to only buy fruit and vegetables from certain shops because most are treated with this chemical to help keep food ''fresh'' longer because of the lack of refrigerated transport and how long it takes to get food to the shop.  Stomach cancer is a real problem here and it is suggested is linked to the use of formalin.   The government is trying to crack down on this but until the infrastructure is improved I am not sure whether that will work.
 

Roading and traffic? - well that is another major challenge due to the monsoons and flooding destroying roads.  There are traffic lights but except for one intersection near us it appears that these are pretty much ignored.   Crossing the road is a whole new adventure where you take your life into your own hands every day.  There are the occasional overbridge like in this photo but most people don't use them.  I went to dinner at a NZ teachers apartment on the weekend.  He has bought a rickshaw for about $200 and he has given it to a driver who battles with the thousands of cycle rickshaws for customers every day.   At the dinner a Bangladesh man who has been to Australia said he much preferred to drive here as the only real rule was to try to keep safe, he found all the road rules in NZ and Australia to be very confusing.  Apparently there are road rules but no one abides by them, certainly not the motorcyclists that ride down the footpath when it is raining or the rickshaws that go the wrong way down roads!

 Disability access? - SIGH sorry Glenn, but not on the agenda yet.

Community development though is a major business here with over 1000 NGO's and others doing work in Dhaka and around.  Many of the countries with embassies here are involved in aide work and that is evident by the number of apartments around our area (the Embassy area) for foreign workers, the majority are involved in embassy, aide work or teaching.  

So count your blessings ...   Keep up the fantastic work you are doing at Marrickville Council, all the best from Bangladesh.