Hill cutting goes unabated

Hill cutting is going on in 12 hills at day light in different areas of Chanda Nagar, Ershad Nagar, Shahi Nabar under Bayezid thana and West Khulshi under Khulshi thana in the city.

A group of journalists of various dailies on Monday witnessed the scene of rampant and indiscriminate hill cutting in the areas.

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According to local people and workers, some influential persons are involved in the evil practice. Besides, dishonest officials of the authorities concerned were also involved, they told the journalists.

The bad practice is going on in front of thousands of people, but no members of the law enforcing authorities was visible there.

Hill cutting is going on for the purpose of residential plots and also for collecting earth. Earth collected through illegal hill-cutting are being sold at Tk 4,000 per truck, a price four times higher than what was only a few years back.

Of the money earned from the sale proceeds of a truckload earth, workers get Tk 1,000, the truck owner gets Tk 1,500 while Tk 1,500 goes to dishonest officials of different authorities concerned, witnesses alleged.

A 12-member committee led by chairman of the Chittagong Development Authority (CDA) comprising members of district and police administration, Chittagong City Corporation, WASA, Chittagong and the Department of Envi-ronment, has been formed to check the illegal practice. But the committee failed to stop the bad practice.

However, the CDA chairman was not available for comments. Chittagong Metropolitan Police (CMP) sources said a total of 58 cases were filed for illegal hill cutting since January last year (2002) till date. Six of the cases were disposed by punishing the persons involved in the evil job.

Director of Department of Environment, Chittagong, Md Mosharraaf Hossain informed this correspondent about shortage of manpower and complained on lack of coordination among the authorities concerned.

At the directive of the Minister for Housing and Public Works, process is underway to form a Monitoring Cell under the supervision of district administration, the director revealed. Formation of the cell might help improve the situation, he hoped. He also informed that his department filed 17 cases including six with environment court in the last one and a-half-years.