High Court directives to save Bangladesh rivers ignored
The High Court directives issued to protect the country’s rivers from grabbing and pollution have largely remained ignored by the ministries and agencies concerned in the past one year, lawyers said.
Most of the ministries and agencies, they said, have not taken effective measures to save the rivers as per the HC directives passed on February 3, 2019 that asked them to take specific actions in a holistic approach.
The HC declared the rivers as ‘living entities’ as well as ‘legal persons’ and issued directives to treat river grabbing and pollution as criminal offences arguing that ‘killing a river is virtually a collective suicide’.
‘Killing a river is killing both the present and future generations,’ the full text of the verdict, released on July 1, 2019, observed.
The HC issued 14 directives to the River Conservation Commission, the Election Commission, the Bangladesh Bank, the shipping ministry, the industries ministry, the environment ministry and the district administrations to rein river pollution and grabbing.
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The court also asked the education ministry, the zila parishads and Bangladesh TV for undertaking awareness generating programmes to save rivers.
The court further declared as a continuing mandamus the writ petition filed by Human Rights and Peace for Bangladesh seeking directives to protect the Turag from the grabbers as reported in an English-language daily.
‘Other than the eviction drives conducted against the grabbers of the rivers flowing around the capital, we haven’t seen the implementation of the directives,’ Manzil Morshed, the petitioner of the public interest litigation case to save the country’s rivers, told New Age on Monday.
‘The verdict is still in effect even though an Appellate Division bench on February 4, 2020, while rejecting the petitions filed by five businesses against the High Court order, said that it would review the HC directives,’ He added.
‘After getting the full text of the Appellate Division verdict, we will again go to the court against the non-implementation of the High Court directives’ he said.
Ha-Meem Group, Anwar Group and three other businesses filed the petition with the Appellate Division challenging the HC order to save the land of the Turag they have grabbed, Manzil said.
An election commissioner admitted that the commission did not submit any affidavit report to the HC stating what measures they had taken to disqualify river grabbers from any national or local election as directed in the verdict.
‘It’s a very good judgement in the public interest but we need to have authentic evidence for preventing a person from taking part in elections,’ election commissioner Shahadat Hossain Chowdhury said.
‘We will, however, work on the issue,’ he hastened to add.
Bangladesh Bank executive director Md Serajul Islam said that they, too, were yet to inform the HC in an affidavit that it had issued a notice to the scheduled banks not to issue bank loans to river grabbers or polluters.
‘But in the light of the directives, we cautioned all banks to crosscheck the nature of the property involved before issuing a loan,’ he said.
National River Conservation Commission chairman Muzibur Rahman Howlader said that the commission for the past eight months had been working for the amendment of the National River Conservation Commission Act 2013 to make the commission a truly ‘person in loco parentis’ as directed by the HC.
‘In the amendment, we will keep a provision for greater punishments against the grabbers and polluters treating grabbing and polluting as criminal offences,’ he said.
He also said that the commission ordered the district administrations, the Bangladesh Inland Water Transport Authority, the Department of Environment, the Dhaka Wasa and other agencies to take measures to conserve the rivers from grabbers and polluters.
Dhaka and Chattogram district administration officials said that they submitted the names of the river grabbers to the commission but did not exhibit the detailed maps of the rivers as directed by the High Court.
Asked about what measures the industries ministry took as per the HC directives to control industrial pollution and make regular discussions on river pollution mandatory for factory workers, industries secretary Md Abdul Halim asked New Age to contact the ministry’s legal wing.
But no official of the wing entertained the question.
Department of Environment officials, however, said that all the public and private factories and industrial parks were disposing of their untreated effluents into all the rivers across the country.
Shipping secretary Mohammad Mezbah Uddin Chowdhury said that their eviction drive against the grabbers was going on in full swing in Dhaka regardless of the identities of the grabbers. But the environment ministry needs to take measures to control pollution, he said.
DoE director general AKM Rafique Ahammed said that the department was facing problems in enforcing the laws against the polluters for manpower crisis.
‘The Wasa and the city corporations and municipalities will have to take measures to save the rivers from domestic wastes and sewage,’ he viewed.
Local government and rural development minister Md Tajul Islam said that the agencies were working to develop sewage treatment plants and landfills.
Directorate of secondary and higher education director general Syed Md Golam Faruk admitted that no instruction was passed to the schools, colleges and madrassahs to hold awareness generating programmes on river pollution or grabbing.
BTV director general Haroon-or Rashid said that the state-run television channel broadcast awareness generating programmes.
Bangladesh Environmental Lawyers Association executive director Syeda Rizwana Hassan lamented the non-implementation of the ‘important verdicts by ministries, agencies and departments’.
‘Such indifferences practically help the grabbers and polluters to continuously ignore the laws,’ she said.
News Courtesy: www.newagebd.net
