Editorial
Our narrowing rivers
HC directives must be correctly, and promptly, implemented
When all else fails, the courts are our last resort to seeking remedies for things gone wrong. In the case of river conservation, however, it seems that, so far, even the courts have failed to have things set straight.
The implementation of a 2009 High Court order directing the concerned authorities to demarcate rivers as per Cadastral Survey and Revised Survey has been erroneous, with faulty demarcation which has left out the foreshores in many places. The 'error', it seems, has been made by officials to deliberately exclude the foreshores so that land-grabbers could cash in, filling up the land for their own purposes. In the process, land-grabbing is being legitimised. Meanwhile, the government, in order to retain the eroded areas and shoals to protect them as directed by the HC, is having to earth-fill into the rivers, making them even narrower than they already are.
We are shocked at the blatant disregard of an HC order by not only unscrupulous land grabbers encroaching upon public land and rivers for their own selfish interests but also government officials who have been assigned the responsibility of protecting the land and rivers. Now, while a committee formed last year to probe the issue of the faulty demarcation says it has relocated the pillars although it is clear that not all of them have been relocated correctly, the national taskforce on river conservation led by the shipping minister appears to be helpless in terms of rectifying the faulty demarcation.
This game of passing the buck must stop. The faulty demarcation is not irreversible. It can be easily rectified if there is true political will. But for this to happen, first, the guilty officials must be made accountable. And secondly, an oversight body comprising experts and government functionaries must be put in place to ensure undoing of the mistakes and correctly implementing the HC's directives towards protecting the rivers.
Strangling our rivers is akin to stifling the lifeline of our country and its people and that is not a crime we can afford to commit. We recall that the prime minister had repeatedly expressed her commitment to freeing Dhaka's rivers from pollution and grabbing. Its high time she turn her attention afresh to this public concern of great import.
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