The latest to figure on the list of major polluters are some 75 industries in Savar disgorging untreated waste into nearby water-bodies, and the omniscient brick-kilns -- 4000 in and around the capital -- which are belching sulfur for the people to breathe instead of required amounts of oxygen.

The offending industries are located in the Savar Export Processing Zone, ironically, the most high-profile industrial area. They were mandated by the licensing authority to be treating the effluents as a public health precaution before releasing these into Bongshi river and the adjoining Dholai beel and canal. The worst part of the tale is that such industries do have waste treatment plants but they are not using them to save money, or let's say, make extra money at the expense of public health involving well-being of some two lakh people.

Whose responsibility it is to enforce the relevant environmental laws -- the ministry of industries, the department of environment or the EPZ authority? We would like to know. Can the EPZ authority absolve itself of the responsibility for not holding the industries accountable by merely pointing at the prospect of a central effluent treatment plant scheduled to be set up with World Bank assistance in a year's time?

Simultaneously, we voice our concern over the lethal air pollution issuing from a few thousand brick kilns in the suburbs of Dhaka. The raising of their chimneys has hardly helped matters, given the dangerous fuel mix the kilns use. The basic question is: why the kilns have been allowed to operate within one kilometre of human habitation when the relevant Act specifically debars establishing them within three kilometres of the habitat?

The air pollution has had such a telling effect on life that not merely diseases have been spawned, even the livelihood pattern is changing. When will the government wake up?