Photo : BSS

By Md Aynal Haque

RAJSHAHI, March 29, 2025 (BSS) - Rajshahi city is enriched with lush greenery, drawing visitors from various parts of the country."

Broaden streets, eye-catching street lighting at night, cleaned atmosphere, road dividers with green trees, plants and crafts as well as improved civic amenities have made the city attractive enormously.

Road Islands have been beautified through transplanting decorative and ornamental flower plants. Erection of butterfly road light draws the attention of the passerby in the night amazingly.

Apart from this, 53.29-kilometer roads were also concretized together with construction of 36.72-kilometer drains. Carpeting on the 4.32-kilometer new road and renovation of the 1.42-kilometer road were done.

The city now looks like a huge park and is setting an example on how to manage a cleaner and greener metropolitan

The surprisingly abundant presence of Krishnachura and Jarul flowers on roadsides throughout the city is a joy and wonder to any visitor.

The city itself gives off the look of a huge park and a metropolitan with such a green heart is a rare sight. Though a rare pleasure for visitors, the dwellers of Rajshahi are used to the sight of reddish-purple bloom during the months of summer.
 
The greenery is the ultimate result of the "Zero Soil" campaign, implemented by the Rajshahi City Corporation (RCC), launched in 2004 to counter the dust blown from nearby Padma River during dry season.

Ashraful Haque, former chief engineer of RCC, said they had been trying to cover all open city spaces with different types of trees and grasses, so that the dust can be absorbed by the flora.
 
Besides the RCC's own tree plantation programme, it has also distributed more than 500 saplings of different trees - from fruits to flowers - to schools and colleges so that the students can plant them to expand the greenery.
 
Apart from this, the RCC authorities had covered the 35-kilometre-long footpaths with red and black tiles. The width of the footpath varies from 8-24 feet.

The city's whole-hearted efforts to preserve the environment was internationally recognised in 2016 when Rajshahi was declared the top pollution controller by the United Nations health agency for reducing dangerous air particulate matter.
 
The greenery is but a part of the initiative to modernise the northern divisional city. The RCC is also quite adept at managing Rajshahi's transportation, waste and sewerage systems, making life comfortable for the dwellers.
 
The green initiative was launched by first elected RCC mayor Mizanur Rahman Minu of the BNP, who ran the office for 15 years.

Talking to BSS here Thursday, Mijanur Rahman said they were working for the betterment of this city, not to implement their own political agenda.

Everyone concerned at the RCC - from cleaners to the mayor - worked to uphold the livability and cleanliness of Rajshahi city.

The city corporation has implemented drainage and approach road construction projects contributing a lot towards freeing the city from water-logging besides making pedestrian movement easy.
 
Problems related to unfit and narrow sections of the present drains and its low-sewerage capacity were removed. All the culverts were widened besides removing the silts from the base of the drains to enhance the sewerage capacity.
 
Former Chief Engineer Ashraful Haque said the physical infrastructure development was implemented for developing the overall environmental health system through building an effective and permanent water sewerage system in the city.
 
Professor Bidhan Chandra Das, a retired teacher at Rajshahi University, expressed his gratitude to the city authority towards making the Rajshahi city beautiful.

He, however, said the RCC will follow the master plan taken by the Rajshahi Development Authority, so that the newly expanded areas would be managed similarly.
 
The master plan incorporates different issues, such as proper land use plans for industrial areas, residential zones, playgrounds and parks. Currently, the city has at least five parks covering more than 70 acres of land.
 
Besides, the city authorities should manage one-fourth of about 200 ponds inside the metropolitan area to keep the hot weather of the city in check.