About a kilometre south of Kutupalong Bazar in Ukhiya upazila, Cox's Bazar, at least 150 shops have been built on hills and land cleared of trees inside a reserved forest. The site has been named Lambashia Bazar, and the upazila administration has appointed someone to collect tolls there without informing the Forest Department, Samakal reports.
According to administration papers, on 19 October the upazila nirbahi officer (UNO), Panna Akter, wrote to the assistant commissioner (land) that Lambashia Bazar in Palongkhali union was a temporary market approved by the deputy commissioner, and that the upazila market management committee had decided on 8 October to collect tolls there. On 27 October the Palongkhali union land assistant officer, Md Noman, gave the job by office order to Mohammad Ali, president of the Rajapalong union Krishak Dal.
Abdul Mannan, the Forest Department's Ukhiya range officer, said the hill area is reserved forest under a 1907 gazette and there is no scope for collecting tolls there under the name of a market. Since the Rohingya arrived, he said, the department has filed at least 50 cases over hill and tree cutting for structures in the Lambashia area and has carried out several eviction drives.
UNO Panna Akter told Samakal the market was declared a temporary haat in 2020 and the tahsildar was asked to collect revenue for law and order and government income; with too few staff he may have engaged a local person, she said, but she herself had appointed no one. Mohammad Ali said he managed to collect tolls for only a few hours on one day, after which traders stopped paying.
Samakal notes that the 2026 Forest and Tree Conservation Act and the Wildlife (Conservation and Security) Act ban non-forest use of natural forest, cutting protected trees in a reserved forest without permission carries a fine of up to one lakh taka, and the High Court has barred roads and commercial structures inside reserved forests.
Advocate Mujibul Haque, chairman of the Cox's Bazar-based Youth Environment Society (YES), said the state has a constitutional duty to protect forest land, and setting up a market in this biodiverse forest breaches both that duty and the law.
Photo: Maaz Hussain (VOA) / Wikimedia Commons (public domain)
Source: samakal
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