Miscreants have uprooted a thousand saplings planted along the bank of a GK irrigation canal in Shailkupa upazila of Jhenaidah. It happened on the night of Saturday, 6 July, on the D-7N canal at Kurir Math in Kazipara village of the upazila.

Officials of the Bangladesh Water Development Board (BWDB) said that nearly 3,000 fruit and timber saplings were planted on both banks of the D-7N canal at Kurir Math in Kazipara on 20 June, under the nationwide tree-planting programme to protect the balance of the environment. Each sapling was fenced with a bamboo cage so it could be looked after. On Saturday night, miscreants pulled up about 1,000 of the trees along the canal bank.

Abu Bakar Biswas, a former union parishad member of Fulhari union, said: "The saplings were planted only a few days ago. They were fenced with bamboo cages so they would not be damaged. Even so, miscreants have uprooted nearly a thousand of them. We want the culprits punished."

Union parishad chairman Awlad Hossain said: "The government took up the tree-planting programme to protect the balance of the environment. But some people in the area cannot accept that development, so they uprooted the saplings. We strongly demand that those involved be identified and action taken."

Asked about it, Zahidul Islam, executive engineer of the Jhenaidah Water Development Board, said 3,000 saplings had been planted along the canal. Local people would have benefited once they grew, he said, but nearly a thousand have now been destroyed.

Source: Jagonews24. First published in Bengali on The Agro News.