An inter-ministerial meeting has decided to rebuild the committees that manage government shrimp estates, to cut through long-running legal and administrative tangles and raise state revenue. The meeting, chaired by Land Minister Md Mizanur Rahman Minu at the Land Ministry in the Secretariat on Tuesday (3 November), was reported by Protidiner Sangbad. Home Minister Salahuddin Ahmed was chief guest.
The meeting unanimously agreed several decisions on Cox's Bazar's shrimp estates. Land without forest will be removed from the Forest Department's gazette and released for shrimp farming, and 195,000 acres held by the forest and fisheries and livestock ministries will be returned to the Land Ministry.
Steps will be taken to settle quickly the writ filed in the High Court by the Bangladesh Environmental Lawyers Association (BELA), which has kept 1,466 shrimp estates in Cox's Bazar suspended from 2012-13 to 2025-26. The 1992 shrimp estate committee will be reconstituted, new rents set and all previously unpaid interest waived.
The home minister said the government can keep collecting revenue on leased land even while a case is pending, until it is settled. He urged quick settlement of state land suitable for, or already under, shrimp farming. Recalling the severe environmental damage from clearing the mangrove forest at Chakaria in Cox's Bazar in the 1980s, he stressed marking out the boundaries of coastal forest.
Land Minister Mizanur Rahman Minu said decades of administrative and legal complications had cost the state heavy revenue and left farmers struggling; committees at upazila, district and national level will be rebuilt and the relevant laws and policies amended. The aim, he said, is not only revenue but protecting the livelihoods of the many who depend on the sector. State Minister for Land Barrister Mir Mohammad Helal Uddin said specific decisions were taken on collecting revenue and ending past irregularities.
If estates frozen for more than a decade reopen, Cox's Bazar shrimp farmers could return to farming under legal leases; how forest land is released and coastal forest boundaries are drawn will be the environmental question to watch.
Photo: HMsayed / Wikimedia Commons (CC BY 4.0)
Source: Protidiner Sangbad
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