Introduction

It is not very long ago, Dhaka possessed an image as a city of green and water bodies. Within last few decades this serene and tranquil city has been transformed into one of the most polluted and crowded cities in the world. Dhaka City Corporation (DCC) is responsible for managing the city. The jurisdic of DCC area is 154 km2 and accommodates about 5.3 million people. (Bangladesh Bureau of Statistics, 2006). It is projected that the population would reach 10 million by the year 2015 (Islam and Shafi, 2004). Around 15% of the citizens live in slums and squatters which are scattered all over the city (Asian Development Bank, 2008). This is creating pressure on the services and infrastructure of the city and making the tasks of DCC more difficult to the point of unmanageable.

Dhaka City Corporation was established as the Dacca Municipality on August 1, 1864. Prior to that, a Committee for the improvement of Dacca (Former spelling of Dhaka) managed the city. The act of 1884 added the provision of elected representatives in municipalities called commissioners. In 1978, it gained corporation status. In 1982, two adjoining municipalities, Mirpur and Gulshan, were merged with Dhaka Municipality. In 1983, it was renamed as Dhaka Municipal Corporation which was again renamed as Dhaka City Corporation in 1990 (Siddiqui, 2005). DCC performed its duty through the Zonal and ward offices. DCC has 10 zonal offices situated at different parts of the city. Zonal offices are administrative units. But at micro scale every locality under 90 DCC wards are governed by respective ward commissioners. Ward Commissioners are elected by direct vote of local residents. Each of this ward commissioners are responsible for overall well being of the residents of their ward. They are also the field level supervisors of DCC activities. They maintain, operate and monitor different DCC activities within their wards.

DCC is responsible for providing some of the basic amenities to its citizen. Conservancy service and certification service are the two of the major tasks perform by DCC. Besides, DCC also runs primary health care facility, primary education program, provides certificate for various purposes to the citizens, collects taxes from the citizen and provides street lighting in Dhaka. However, there is growing consensus within the academia and media that DCC has failed to achieve desired standard in its performance (Imam, 1998; Haq, Ahsan et al., 2002; Hossain, 2002; Chepesiuk, 2003; Hossain, Wagatsuma et al., 2004; Islam and Shafi, 2004; Alam, 2005; Mercer Human Resource Consulting, 2007; Luck , 2008). Few of the studies assessed the performance of DCC in quantitative term.

The present study tried to asses the services rendered by DCC quantitatively. This is done through taking a demand side perspective through user survey. User’s feedback is often considered as an important tool for improving quality of services. But it is rarely use by the public service organizations. The study used citizen feedback as a form of assessing quality of urban services.