Editorial
Desperate hill grabbers
Need for tougher measures to stop it
Defying High Court ruling against cutting hills without Environmental Impact Assessment (EIA) clearance from Department of Environment (DoE), yet another reserved hill has fallen prey to a grabber's greed near Cox's Bazar sea beach.
The local influential person involved in the forcible occupation used faked documents of ownership and has started a housing project and levelled a large swathe of land at hilltop threatening a government-owned telecommunication tower adjacent to his project.
The individual responsible had been doing his illegal construction works under the nose of the local administration before it could take action. Surprisingly, the grabber claimed that he was ignorant of the hill's reserved status, while the head of the district police administration admitted to only having heard of the illegal activity.
It may be recalled that, in the first week of this month, the DoE had penalised two housing projects at Sitakunda and in Chittagong. And the HC order restricting the offence was issued on August 23 amidst a free-for-all among the hill grabbers.
The latest incident is a patent case of desperation on the part of the grabbers who think nothing of the administration and the HC ruling in the criminal act of inflicting irreversible damage to the environment and biodiversity of the hills.
The way the illegal act of hill cutting is continuing, it appears, its perpetrators are very powerful and influential so much so that they can bend the laws at will.
The destructive trend has been going on too long to allow it any further and has to be topped under any circumstances, if we mean to protect the hills and their ecology.
What the administration had been doing so far to arrest the illegal activity has proved inadequate. Now the need is to take tougher measures. The government will be required to exert its political will to put an end to the destructive practice and punish its perpetrators.
For all latest news, follow The Daily Star's Google News channel.
Comments