Despite a High Court ban and warnings from the administration, wetland in Munshiganj's historic Arial Beel is still being filled, local people say. At the same time, topsoil is being cut from the fertile farmland around the beel and carried by trawler to brick kilns, shrinking both the water bodies and the farmland.
In West Baraikhali in Sreenagar upazila, a dredger working at night has filled about half of a deep wetland of roughly one and a quarter acres, and filling continues on the rest. At the beel's Gadighat section, the mouth of a bridge built to let water flow through is being blocked with sand.
Residents say the work stopped for a while after the administration intervened but has resumed at night. Every night sand is brought in by bulkhead vessels and pumped into the wetland by dredger until morning. One resident, speaking on condition of anonymity, said that while sand goes into the wetland on one side, topsoil cut from farmland goes by trawler to brick kilns in Sirajdikhan upazila on the other.
Locals say a gang has been doing this openly for a long time and that complaints to the administration have gone nowhere. Sreenagar's assistant commissioner (land), Afroza Haque Tania, said she was not aware of it and that action would be taken after looking into it.
Reported by Krishi Shomoy's Munshiganj correspondent.
Photo: Arial Beel, MD.SHADDAM HOSSAIN / Wikimedia Commons (CC BY-SA 4.0)
Source: Krishi Shomoy
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