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Shajahan trouble for Dhaka rivers

He presses for accepting faulty demarcation now and correcting that later

Tawfique Ali
Correcting the error. That is the way any sensible mind would respond in the event of a mistake.
But Shipping Minister Shajahan Khan appears to be one who would move ahead with an error, even if at great cost.
Bangladesh Inland Water Transport Authority (BIWTA), custodian of the country's inland waterways, had several thousand demarcation pillars wrongly set up over the past three years, causing four major rivers around Dhaka city to lose nearly 2,500 acres of land to grabbers.
While monetary value of the land lost in the process is estimated to be no less than Tk 25,000 crore, its environmental worth is invaluable, according to the officials concerned.
Shajahan Khan, who heads the national taskforce for safeguarding rivers, was aware of it all along. But little did he do to correct this error, despite an outcry from different quarters during this whole time, said official sources.
And now, the minister is pressing the BIWTA to accept the erroneous demarcation.
"The BIWTA has to take over the responsibilities of the boundary pillars whether set up correctly or in a faulty way," said Shahjahan Khan when contacted over the phone recently.
"Why should the contractors suffer due to the wrongdoings of some government officials?" he said in a clear indication that he was more concerned about paying the contractors their dues than protecting the lifelines.
Was he then allowing the rivers to lose out to grabbers? When this correspondent asked him this, he replied, "It
would not be difficult to evict the river grabbers later."
He, however, did not detail how that could be done.
The project cost was Tk 20.5 crore and the contractors have already been paidTk 19.3 crore.
'BEGINNING OFAN END'
The High Court in 2009 ordered the government to retain the eroded areas and formed land [shoals] as part of the Buriganga, the Shitalakkhya, the Turag, the Balu and the Dhaleshwari rivers.
Then the national taskforce was formed by the prime minister to save the country's rivers, particularly those around Dhaka city, from grabbers and polluters.
The district administrations of Dhaka, Narayanganj, Gazipur and Munshiganj in April 2011 embarked on setting up pillars along both banks of HOkm-long stretch of the rivers. They,
however, ignored the very definition of a river in the port act and drew boundary lines along the lean water flow during the dry season, excluding the extensive foreshores, said officials.
Foreshore is the soil lying between the low-water mark during the dry season and the high-water mark of normal monsoon tides.
According to a BIWTA estimate, the Shitalakkhya alone has lost 1,860 acres of its land including 595 acres of foreshore to the faulty demarcation.
Unlike minister Shahjahan Khan, the BIWTA chairman realises the disastrous consequence the faulty demarcation pillars can bring about.
"The rivers would be lost if the demarcation excluding the foreshores is accepted, " Md Samsuddoha Khondaker told The Daily Star. He voiced similar concerns at a meeting of the taskforce on November 12, according to a meet-
ingsource.
"It would only justify grabbing and polluting the rivers and cause loss of several thousand acres of foreshore areas for good," he added.
WHAT OTHERS SAY
Though all that the shipping minister seems to care about is paying the contractors' dues, Environment and Forests Minister Anwar Hossain Manju, also a member of the taskforce, thinks it can never be a major issue.
"I would not have done it if I were in his [Shahjahan Khan's] position," he said.
Major (rtd) Rafiqul Islam, chairman of the parliamentary standing committee on the shipping ministry, said paying the contractors' bills is not a must if the assigned work is not done properly.
"However, we will ask the shipping secretary for a summary of what deci-
sions the taskforce has so far taken and how many of them have been implemented, "he said.
Hasan Mahmud, head of the parliamentary standing committee on the environment ministry, said the taskforce had earlier decided to rectify the demarcation errors before the pillars are taken over.
"I think the actual river boundary should be restored first as per the previous decision," he said.
Meanwhile, questions on the taskforce's activities have been raised from inside the body itself.
"The taskforce is mostly a forum for irrelevant and pointless discussions... It is hardly doing anything for river conservation," said a member of the taskforce, wishing anonymity.
"The taskforce has too many cooks and they are spoiling the broth," he added.
WHAT IS BEING DONE
Kazi Wakil Nawaz, BIWTA joint director and port officer of Narayanganj, said they identified a total of 2,198 faulty pillars along the Shitalakkhya in 2011.
Md Saiful Islam, port officer of Dhaka, said, "Despite our objections, district authorities went ahead with the faulty installation ofpillars."
Forty-one out of 92 pillars along the Buriganga in Kadamtali mouja alone were found to have been wrongly installed, he said, adding that many such boundary pillars were identified in Ramchandrapur and Mirpur moujas and along the Balu and the Turag rivers in Savar, Ichhapur and Tongi.
Asked what the BIWTA is doing about these, its chairman Samsuddoha Khondaker said they are now working to identify how many pillars have been wrongly set up.