Filth fills up Buriganga banks
Encroachers' new way to grab the dying river
Morshed Ali Khan
Encroachers are adopting a new technique to slowly fill up the Buriganga banks with household and industrial rubbish on the pretext that they have no alternative as the Dhaka City Corporation (DCC) garbage pickups never collect their rubbish from the area. This time the encroachers are violating the concrete embankment along the river, which the experts had constructed to demarcate the river and protect it from encroachment. Besides, the government's plan to protect the Buriganga Second Channel along Kamrangirchar is also being marred as a section of local people, who are producing 'official' documents of ownership, are systematically filling up the channel. In densely populated areas of Kamrangirchar, Imamganj, Swarighat, Babubazar, Shyambazar, Postogola and Zinzira along the river, about a hundred sites have been created on both the banks to dump rubbish. Several places of the embankment earmarking the riverbank have been covered with rubbish. At some places the encroachers have planted trees on the huge piles of rubbish that have filled up parts of the river. The most prominent dumping sites along the river are at Zinzira, where huge garment wastes along with household rubbish are dumped into the river. Finding a local trader dumping rubbish on the slope of the embankment from a rickshaw van yesterday morning, this correspondent asked why he was filling up the river. "The Dhaka City Corporation has no arrangement for collecting rubbish in the area and we have no other alternative," was the reply of the callous trader. With this fresh onslaught on the Buriganga, the government's task force to protect the river comes under renewed challenge. Activities of the task force, however, had already come to a standstill following the death of shipping minister Col (rtd) Akbar Hossain. The last meeting of the task force was held on April 25, 2006. State Minister for Shipping Major (rtd) Quamrul Islam, now in-charge of the shipping ministry, told The Daily Star that he would look into the matter immediately. "I am soon going to visit the spots and take necessary steps to protect the river," Quamrul Islam said. About the task force meeting, the minister said he would fix up a date for the meeting after consultation with the ministry officials. With shortage of manpower the corporation could do little to prevent people from dumping rubbish into the river, DCC's Chief Conservancy Officer Commander Sohel Faruqui said, adding that at short distances along the river, DCC has placed rubbish containers where the local people are supposed to dispose of rubbish. He said dumping rubbish into the Buriganga is meant for grabbing the river in which a vested interest quarter is involved.
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