Once, Dhaka Shishu Park was alive with laughter. Children raced toward the toy train, spun on the merry-go-round and clambered onto a jet plane gifted by the Bangladesh Air Force. The park was always filled with laughter and excitement.
Today, the park is silent. Green tin sheets hide what goes on inside, and most of the rides are gone. A few stands enclosed in rusting metal, saplings growing through cracks around them. The playground’s soil has been dug up, an underground parking lot is half-built, and an artificial lake lies empty. Only the public toilet remains functional, while a handful of workers try to keep the place from total decay.
Dhaka’s main government-run amusement park for children has been closed for seven long years. What was meant to be a renovation under the banner of “development” has instead become a story of delays, rising costs and allegations of corruption.
In 2018, the Ministry of Liberation War Affairs allocated Tk 78 crore to renovate the park as part of the “Independence Monument Construction” project, which included creating underground parking beneath the playground. The work was supposed to start in January 2018 and finish by December 2019, but the Dhaka South City Corporation found the budget insufficient for proper modernisation and returned the proposal.
The Public Works Department then took over, and the cost ballooned first to Tk 265 crore, then to Tk 397 crore, with deadlines repeatedly extended. By January 2019, the park was completely closed behind tin walls. In May 2020, Sheikh Fazle Noor Taposh became mayor of Dhaka South City Corporation and decided the city would manage the park’s renovation itself. Eventually, a Tk 603 crore project was approved by the National Economic Council in August 2023, with half the funding as government grants and the rest partly as loans and partly from the city’s own budget.
The plan included 15 new rides, including a 30-person “Mine Train”, a “Disco Mega” ride, a “Super Air Race” and a 12D theatre. Allegations have emerged that five contractors were appointed through favouritism, raising concerns about transparency.
The once-vibrant Dhaka Shishu Park has now become a shadow of its former self, with rusting rides and empty grounds. Disturbingly, parts of the abandoned park have begun to attract drug users, who gather there to smoke weed, adding to the sense of neglect and decay.
Seven years of closure have left the park a silent, half-finished space with rusting rides, dug-up soil and metal sheets where laughter once echoed. For the children of Dhaka, it is more than a playground; it is a lost piece of their childhood, waiting to be restored.
