Staff Reporter:
Dhaka WASA yesterday has caught digging a road without proper authorization- by forging the signa-ture of a Dhaka South City Corporation (DSCC) official.
The incident took place on the road adjacent to Lalbagh Shaheed Abdul Alim playground in Ward 26.
Upon being informed about the unauthorized excavation, DSCC officials visited the site and requested to see the permission documents from the workers. The workers produced a document, but further investi-gation revealed that the signature of the responsible DSCC official had been forged.
By the time the fraud was uncovered, the WASA workers and supervisors had fled the scene. DSCC sub-sequently seized the equipments used in the excavation, which included two generators, one drill ma-chine, two aluminum bowls, two crowbars, one shovel, one LED light, and five helmets.
According to sources, Dhaka WASA had sought permission from DSCC’s One Stop Cell to dig the road for the installation of an Electronic Pressure Reducing Valve (E-PRV) in the main water line under the Sayedabad Water Treatment Plant.
Permission was granted, and a letter was sent on April 21, signed by Zone-3’s regional executive engi-neer, Mithun Chandra Shil, to WASA’s Sayedabad Water Treatment Plant (maintenance) executive en-gineer, Syed Mostakim Hossain.
The permission allowed road digging between April 24 and April 30. However, Dhaka WASA did not initiate the excavation within this period and instead requested an extension until May 23 on April 29. The request was received by the DSCC executive engineer on April 30. Due to the Eid-ul-Azha and oth-er considerations, DSCC verbally informed WASA that the road could not be dug at that time due to potential public inconvenience. Despite this, Dhaka WASA attempted to dig the road twice without per-mission, leading to a letter from the regional executive engineer of Zone-3 stating that the road could not be dug on May 20.
Yesterday, around 2:30pm, the DSCC executive engineer was notified that WASA was digging the road.
Additionally, Dhaka WASA had initially sought permission to excavate a 12.42 square meter section of the road. However, they started excavating 13.29 square meters and 2.04 square meters at two different locations by forging the DSCC official’s signature and without permission.
Mithun Chandra Shil, the regional executive engineer of Zone-3, stated, “Dhaka WASA was digging the road adjacent to Lalbagh’s Shaheed Abdul Alim playground without permission. When informed, our officials went there. (I was in an official meeting at the city building at that time). The WASA workers showed our officials a road excavation permission document with my purported signature. Suspecting something, they sent the document to me. Upon review, I confirmed that my signature was forged, and the date was altered. When this became known, the workers fled the scene. We then seized the equip-ment used in the excavation. Since my signature was forged and the date altered, we will take appropri-ate legal action, including filing a lawsuit if necessary.”
