Pollution threatens world’s longest sea beach

Cox’s Bazar sea beach, the longest natural sea beach in the world, is getting polluted fast for lack of proper waste management which is also creating public nuisance in an otherwise unspoiled natural setting.

Tourists said that the sandy beach was losing its attraction gradually for wastes left scattered by thousands of visitors everyday as the authorities apparently remained indifferent to and showed no concern for cleanliness.

The 155 km unbroken beach attracts around three lakh tourists everyday round the year on an average in the resort town Cox’s Bazar, according to an unofficial estimation.

Aslam Ali, a tourist from Dhaka said that he had visited all the three crowded beach points — Shugandha, Laboni and Kalatoli — and found that all types of wastes including plastic bottles, polythene bags, coconut remains, biscuits and chips packets floating on the seawater at the beach.

During visits to those points of the beach, a waste bin for each umbrella seat was seen. But no waste collector was assigned to clean them on a regular basis and the private operators renting out the umbrella seats regularly dump those wastes beside the beach in the evening, local people and visitors alleged.

‘Tourists are using small bins meant for wastes but the umbrella owners dump them beside the beach as the municipality did not assign any waste collector or built any large bins, said Ahamed Ullah, an umbrella attendant at the beach.

Cox’s Bazar municipality mayor Mojibur Rahman told New Age that the municipality had no dumping station as yet, so they were compelled to carry on with haphazard dumping.

He said that the municipality has only 300 waste collectors, 22 vans and seven trucks to manage waste of six lakh people including three lakh tourists.

He said that the situation arose due to indifference of the authority in the last 40 years when none thought about waste management.

Local people said that for years the municipality was dumping daily 120 tonnes of wastes on the bank of the Bakkhali River, polluting and filling the water body.

Green activist and also chief executive officer of Youth Environment Society in Cox’x Bazar Ibrahim  Khalil Ullah Mamun said that they repeatedly asked the authority to stop the pollution but it went unheeded.

Quoting a recent study conducted by Bangladesh Fisheries Research Institute he said that researchers found the presence of micro-plastic in fish and salt collected from the Bay of Bengal.

Mojibur said that the government recently set a dump station at SM Para in the town for waste dumping.

The department of environment declared the Cox’s Bazar-Teknaf Sea beach as ecologically critical area and prohibited activities which effect animal, water, sand and air of the beach.

Green activists said that plastic pollution at sea was very dangerous for ecology. They suggested the government to take immediate actions against beach pollution.

Several hundred hawkers were seen selling food and shell ornaments where several thousand domestic and foreign tourists pour in on a daily basis.

Mamun said that the government agencies were mostly involved in activities violating the beach development master plan harming the pristine quality of the sea beach.

He said that the court in 2011 ordered the authorities to evict all illegal structures on the beach but no action was taken so far.

News Courtesy: www.newagebd.net