'Dhaka to be smart city by 2017'

He made this declaration during a panel titled 'Digital Bangladesh – Perspective Smart Dhaka' at the Digital World 2016 expo on Thursday.

“Smart city does not mean we will turn Dhaka into London or Singapore,” the mayor said.

“It means there will be improvements to the city corporations' services such as waste management and infrastructure,” he said.

Technology would be integrated into all aspects of the city, he added.

Dhaka's growing population and transport movement was a big challenge for the authorities, said Ashok Kumar Seetharaman, director of the eGovernment Leadership Centre at National University of Singapore, who was one of the panelists.

He recommended that the authorities take steps to reduce private transport and introduce services such as Uber to that end.

Other panelists at the event were ICT Secretary Shyam Sunder Sikder, Srikant Kadambi of Microsoft Asia Pacific's Government and Public Utility Division, Zhou Henghui, senior smart city planner at ZTE Corporation and Derek Sun, Vice President of Government and Public Utility Sector at Huawei Technologies.