Commercial shrimp farming is destroying farmland in the coastal belt, said Khushi Kabir, coordinator of the non-government organisation Nijera Kori. Heavy pesticide use on the land is also putting people's lives and health at serious risk, she said, speaking on Saturday, 7 November, at a meeting at the Karunamoyee memorial in Horinkhola, Paikgachha upazila, Khulna, Samakal reported.
Nijera Kori and local landless organisations held the event on the 36th anniversary of the death of Karunamoyee Sardar, who was killed in the movement to protect farmland from shrimp enclosures and outsiders. Coastal men and women and school and college students joined the wreath-laying, discussion and cultural programme.
Khushi Kabir said outsiders were building fish hatcheries without regard for local opinion, which she called very harmful to the environment. She named a permanent embankment on Polder 22 as residents' main demand and called for the administration to be held accountable for delivering it. Landless leader Shahidul Islam also said outsiders were ruining farmland with hatcheries.
Describing the effects of salt water, landless leader Itika Bairagi said women on the coast suffer a range of long-term illnesses because of saline intrusion. Another leader, Shahinur Begum, said they had used the experience of the Polder 22 struggle to free Polder 30 of shrimp enclosures and restore farming there.
Landless leader Lokeshwar Kobiraj said climate change was silting up the area's rivers and canals, and that without planned river dredging the whole farming system would collapse. Environmental campaigner Samarkanti Haldar, former Government B L College principal Dr Achintya Kumar Mondal and Nijera Kori executive member Afzalunnesa Chowdhury also spoke. The event ended with a puppet show on salinity and a play on coastal life, Nona Kabya.
Source: samakal
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