With a new brick-kiln season approaching, hill cutting and soil selling have resumed in Lama upazila of Bandarban, the Daily Janakantha reports. Hill cutting, the illegal soil trade, housing projects and the filling of low land are damaging forests and the natural balance.
Environmental groups count about 40 registered and unregistered brick kilns in and around Lama. More than 30 of them stand within a few square kilometres of Faitong union, and a large share run without environmental clearance or legal approval.
Local people say each kiln needs 3 to 5 million cubic feet of raw soil a season, most of it from nearby hills. One estimate puts the soil cut in Faitong and surrounding areas at 10 to 15 million cubic feet a season. To avoid the authorities, excavators work at night and before dawn, and cut slopes are covered with tarpaulin or sacking by day; hundreds of dump trucks and trolleys carry the soil away at night, wrecking village roads.
Hills cut into steep faces now risk collapsing in light rain. Hill streams and natural water sources have filled with soil, leaving at least 15 to 20 hamlets with a severe drinking-water shortage, while forest resources and wildlife habitat are being lost.
Resident Farid Hossain said villagers who tried to stop the digging had got into trouble, so fear keeps people silent. Aminul Islam, general secretary of the Lama Press Club, said a hill takes a thousand years to form but is being flattened in days for a brick kiln.
On 8 September the High Court ordered the local administration to take effective action within three days to stop illegal hill cutting in Lama. Residents say activity picked up in places but the cutting never stopped. Lama's upazila nirbahi officer, Md Moin Uddin, said mobile drives are under way in line with the court order, fines and cases are being filed and a monitoring committee has been formed, and no one involved will be spared.
Source: Daily Janakantha
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