Illegal Structures Along 'chhara'

Fund crisis, threats to SCC men halt demolition drive

7 April 2009, 18:00 PM

Iqbal Siddiquee, Sylhet

Unscrupulous people have occupied and filled up a part of Telikhal Chhara, changing course of the natural water outlet flowing through Sylhet city.Photo: STAR

The Sylhet City Corporation (SCC)'s bid to remove illegal structures from along the banks of 15 natural streams (locally called chhara) has been facing much resistance and threats from the grabbers. Meanwhile, the city dwellers are worried that they may face another spell of waterlogging this year also as the rainy season approaches. Acting Chief Engineer of the SCC AKM Luthfur Rahman told the Daily Star that SCC employees recently got several threats as they started marking the original alignment of the canals for recovering those from the illegal occupants. "If things continue this way it would be hard to attain success", said Chief Executive Officer Kazi Abdul Nur. However, we would try our best to recover the occupied banks of the streams to resolve the waterlogging problem in the city, he added. The SCC, however, could not do much as there was fund crisis to continue work, the Chief Engineer admitted. Sources said Tk 11 crore project for recovering the streams had been lying pending with the ministry of LGRD for about a year. The SCC sent the project last year and after several queries, the project would now be sent to the Planning Ministry for final approval for funds, an official said. He also feared that it may not be possible to implement the main component of the project during the current fiscal. A good number of illegal structures had already been erected or raised along both banks of the natural streams/canals. Besides, a good number of private houses had laid their outlet lines of the toilets on the streams polluting the environment, causing health hazard to the people around. On the other hand, many influential people had already occupied lands along banks narrowing the streams. Indiscriminate grabbing of banks of the streams had narrowed the streams at many points and changed their routings at some places. There had been demands for evicting those unauthorised and illegal structures for long. Especially, due to shrinking of those natural streams, the city people suffer from acute water logging on a heavy or medium rainfall during the monsoon. Different organisations also raised the demand for measures against the illegal occupation during the last regimes. Things even got political cover at times, locals said. But all went in vain due to the over politicisation of the serious public issue. The SCC authority as well as the district administration simply failed to go ahead with the programme for evicting the illegal structures along the canal banks during the last AL, BNP led regimes, they alleged. However, after the One-Eleven, things got a major change. The SCC detected some of the illegal structures on field survey and marked those with red signs while asking the landowners for voluntarily removing the grabbed portion within a specific period. A good number of people vacated their occupied lands in some areas. But things remained almost unchanged as works had to be suspended due to fund shortage. Although every year parts of the city badly suffer due to water logging, in 2001 about 80 per cent area in the city went under water due to the floods as almost all the natural streams had been narrowed down by indiscriminate grabbing. The district administration and Zila Parishad on emergency basis took a porgramme at the instruction from the then Finance Minister M Saifur Rahman as the situation took a serious turn on the following year too. Some portions of Malnichhera and Goalichhara were recovered at the very beginning, but things stopped within a few days for unknown reason. Last year also, Tk 25 lakh was spent for the streams/narrow canals named-Goali Chhara, Gaviar Khal, Malnichhara, Ratnar Khal, Nochai Chhara, Mongoli Chhara, Kalibari, Haldi Chhara, Ghogini Chhara, Ratan Moni Khal Basu Khal, Bhubi Chhara, Jumki Chhara and Dhopa Chhara.