The administration in Koyra upazila of Khulna has completed the process to lease 3.67 acres of char in the Shakbaria river at Khashitana as a sand quarry (balumahal), just 50 metres from the Sundarbans and beside an erosion-prone embankment. The proposal from the upazila and district sand quarry committees has gone to the Khulna divisional commissioner's office for final approval, Daily Bangladesh's Koyra correspondent Kamal Hossain reports.
Under the Sand Quarry and Soil Management Act 2010, no quarry may be leased beside an embankment the Water Development Board (WDB) has marked as at risk, or where extraction threatens the river's environment, biodiversity, fisheries or aquatic and land animals. Local people say the site falls under these restrictions but this was not taken into account.
Two chars have risen mid-river and both banks are eroding. A WDB contractor is fighting erosion on the village side, but there is no effective protection on the Sundarbans side, where trees of several species are toppling into the river. Residents allege that a ring has long dug sand illegally from risky spots under cover of supplying embankment and building work, and is now pushing for the lease.
Sirajul Islam, a former member for South Bedkashi union, said the government might earn one or two crore taka a year, but damage to the Sundarbans and the embankment could not be repaired with a thousand crore. Tarikul Islam, president of the Sundarbans and Coast Protection Committee, said dredging sand from rivers inside the forest has already worsened erosion on both banks of the Chhera river, and called for the lease to be cancelled.
Koyra's assistant commissioner (land), Srabani Biswas, called the site risky, noting that a project of about Tk 1,200 crore to rebuild the damaged embankment is under way there and a quarry could create a double crisis. A Z M Hasanur Rahman, divisional forest officer of the Sundarbans West division, said leasing a quarry in a river beside the Sundarbans is illegal. Khondoker Md Fazlul Hoque, Khulna divisional director of the Department of Environment, said the site should on no account be approved.
WDB Khulna-2 executive engineer Md Rashedur Rahman said he did not know whether a lease beside a risky embankment was being granted, but action would be taken against anything that harms it. Khulna deputy commissioner Hure Jannat, who chairs the district committee, said the proposal is awaiting approval and any objection will be considered before the next step.
Photo: Md. Rabiul Islam / Wikimedia Commons (CC BY 3.0)
Source: Daily Bangladesh
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