Rubbish collected around Batali station in Lohagara upazila of Chattogram has been dumped late at night on Chunati Wildlife Sanctuary land for about 15 days, and the Batali town management committee is accused of doing it. On Tuesday afternoon heaps of waste lay in the sanctuary's Banpukur and Jangalia areas beside the Chattogram-Cox's Bazar highway.
The rotting waste is giving off a stench that troubles people nearby, and residents fear lasting damage to the forest, wildlife habitat and the wider environment if the dumping continues.
Local environmental campaigners say market and residential waste should be removed scientifically to designated sites, not dumped beside a forest, and that protecting a sanctuary is the duty of the local administration and waste handlers as well as the Forest Department.
Kazi Nurul Alam Chowdhury, convener of the Batali town management committee, claims the dumping has the verbal permission of the upazila executive officer, and denies that a forest worker was threatened for trying to stop it.
Anisuzzaman Sheikh, range officer for the sanctuary, said senior officials had been informed and legal action would be taken, adding that a forest worker had received a death threat after objecting. Lohagara's upazila executive officer, Md Bayezid Bin Akhand, called the claim of verbal permission false and baseless and said dumping waste in a wildlife sanctuary was unacceptable.
The report is by Mohammad Maruf, Dainik Azadi's Lohagara correspondent.
Photo: Asif Chowdhury Sadi / Wikimedia Commons (CC BY-SA 4.0)
Source: Dainik Azadi
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