No country for heat officers

Troll as much as you can.

That is what we did to Dhaka North's chief heat officer. It was bound to happen, because we do not understand the necessity of heat officers in our cities. If our heat officer was a male human and our mayor's son, we would not have trolled her as much as we did her and what she has been doing to lower our city's temperature.

Understood.

Having said that, I must add that Bangladesh is not ready to listen to heat officers, because we do not care for holistic living or, for that matter, to conserve the city's environment. We have saddled up to make money at any cost within our lifetime, without thinking of the consequences our progeny would incur.

A heat officer's responsibilities are many, but let us look at some salient ones: heat preparedness planning, data analysis and monitoring, public health advocacy, community engagement, urban planning and infrastructure resilience, and emergency response coordination.

Dhaka's heat officer has been talking about preparedness planning; she is also advocating for public health and involving herself in various community engagements, planting trees, educating, and raising awareness.

However, we do not know whether she has any data analysis to understand and monitor what has gone wrong and what we could do to fix it. Although data is a national challenge, in a super-digital age, we should be able to provide data to our heat officer.

Now, what would the heat officer do with the data? Oh, come on! Without data, how will we understand the damages we have done, and how can we rectify them? 

So, data is required.

As far as we have witnessed, there is a horrendous lack of coordination among the authorities engaged in urban infrastructure and amenities planning and implementation. We grew without thinking of the environmental consequences. 

Who is looking after our emergency response coordination? Nobody. Our city management looks like a pandemonium of poor planning.

Would we give our heat officer access to intervene in this entire process? Is she empowered enough to undo the wrongs we have committed? Certainly not; the heat officer will miserably fail in this flawed atmosphere.

Let us run an experiment. Let us swarm the country with 64 heat officers across 64 districts. Each one will shoulder the responsibility to reduce heat-related activities in their districts. Would our heat officers be able to prevent those from felling trees across the country? No, not at all. There are a thousand other activities we will not allow our heat officers to accomplish. 

Will the heat officers be able to do anything about how our water bodies are being israeled by a group of corrupt people?

Heat officers in this country are bound to fail in many frontiers because of the system development we put in place for ourselves. However, introducing heat officers into our society could clear our consciences, which are shrouded in self-annihilatory decisions and actions regarding our living conditions.

We should institutionalise the posts of heat officers by bringing about some legal reforms. These reforms are crucial to empowering our heat officers and enabling them to make a real difference. Yes, initially, their status and work would face challenges, but with the right legal framework, they would add great value to our society.

Let us start that process by appointing a heat officer in Dhaka's south.

Ekram Kabir is a storyteller and a communications professional. He is just an email away – [email protected].

Disclaimer: The views and opinions expressed in this article are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the opinions and views of The Business Standard.