Bangladesh Shadharon Nagorik Shomaj (Bangladesh Civil Society) gathered in front of WASA building in Kawran Bazar to demand cancellation of the decision to increase the water prices on Sunday.
Speakers in the protest rally said that the decision taken by the management of WASA to increase the price of water by 20 percent is reckless and heavily burdensome on the people.
“While the current managing director is in charge, the price has been increased in stages. However, the quality of customer service has not increased. Money is collected from the customer even if the water supply is dirty or smelly in some areas,” they added.
The speakers said that even in the midst of the pandemic, prices have risen twice, which is inhumane. However, the amount of losses has increased in parallel. This proves that inflation is not the only way to solve the problem.
“At present the production cost of 1000 liters of water is Tk 25, but it is sold at Tk 15. The remaining Tk 10 is subsidized by the government. However, we believe that there is no need for a single penny of subsidy and it is possible to make WASA profitable by further reducing the price and increasing the quality of citizen service,” they said.
The speakers further went on saying that the cost of system loss, subsidy, waste, corruption and mismanagement cannot be borne by the citizens.
“We want to urge the government to strictly deal with the management to make it more profitable to provide digitally accountable and quality citizen services without subsidies. Therefore, it is essential to increase the quality of citizen service by canceling the price increase decision,” they said.
The rally was presided over by Mohiuddin Ahmed, the convener of the Bangladesh Civil Society.
