EDITORIAL
Eviction drives must be more unbiased and vigorous
It is frustrating that despite the High Court according all rivers in the country the status of “legal persons” or “living identities” and in spite of Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina’s clear instructions to save our rivers by evicting river grabbers, these rivers are being indiscriminately destroyed by the greed of influential individuals and organisations. According to a report in this paper, as many as 57,390 individuals and organisations have grabbed the country’s 770 rivers. Such a staggering number of river grabbers indicates how widespread this plunder of our natural resources is and how difficult it is to remove them.
The National River Conservation Commission (NRCC), which presented a report to the parliamentary standing committee on shipping, has identified this number and said that out of them, 18,579 have been evicted in the last one year by deputy commissioners of various districts. So what happens to the almost 38,811 river grabbers remaining, who continue to fill up the river beds to build structures and end up destroying the natural flow of the rivers, eventually killing them? How long will it take to remove them?
The reason why such gross destruction of our precious water bodies has taken place is because at least 10 percent of the encroachers are locally or politically influential people. These individuals have built large structures on the rivers and riverbanks in almost every division, yet it is not possible to demolish them because the encroachers are so powerful. Some of these are government structures and therefore not easy to demolish either. District commissioners also need more funding and logistical support to carry out eviction drives, according to the NRCC report.
It does not take much deduction to conclude that the only way that our rivers can be saved from this indiscriminate onslaught is through a strict and continuous drive to evict all river grabbers, regardless of their connections. To begin with, the government should first remove all structures in its name and those built by people who are affiliated or claim to be affiliated to the ruling party. This is the only way to make sure that eviction drives are successful.
We hope that in the coming year, we will see the government’s commitment to freeing the rivers from these encroachers and allowing these rivers to breathe again. Livelihoods, aquatic life, river transport, food security and relief from water logging—everything depends on our rivers being able to flow unfettered. Rivers are our lifelines and to save them means saving ourselves.
