To the relief of students and teachers of a primary school and residents in the city's Basila, a team of the Department of Environment (DoE) yesterday shut down an extremely noisy dredging platform adjacent to the school.

The DoE team also confiscated the dredger and fined its owner Abdul HaiTk50,000.

For the last two years, Hai, who identified himself as a leader of the Krishak League, peasants' wing of the ruling party, operated the machine in the river Buriganga from morning till late evening every day, defying pleas from parents, teachers and residents.

Hai's business, which is hardly a few feet away from Basila Government Primary School, not only disturbed

studies at the school but also jarred on the nerves of the locals.

“We sincerely thank the department of environment for removing this torturous business from our doorstep, which really made our life miserable,” said a mother of a student and a resident of the area requesting not to be named.

The vacuum dredger pumped sand and water into a nearby ditch for selling the sand to the construction companies in the city. Local people said that nobody in the area dared to confront Abdul Hai on this issue.

Hai was not present during the DoE drive led by its Director (Monitoring and Enforcement) Munir Chowdhury onlYiesday.

He was, however, summoned to the DoE office yesterday where the DoE enforcement director notified him about the fine and imposition of ban on such a noisy operation near a school and in a densely populated residential area.

Hai confessed to his crime and promised to remove the remaining structures from the site by tomorrow.

Interestingly, when the drive to stop the noise was continuing, two men from a nearby dental clinic casually walked to the river bank with two sacks in their hands.

When they were unloading two piles of clinical wastes on the riverbank under the very nose of the DoE, the team leader immediately ordered their arrest.

Both the perpetrators were taken into custody and later released on a fine of Tk 10,000 and a cautionary note.

The Rab-2 personnel assisted the DoE team during the drive.