Our forests
Sikander Ahmed, Dhaka
In 1978, I set up the first project in private agro-forestry in Bangladesh on my own barren hills near Chittagong. In the next 10 years, more than 100,000 trees/plants of over 60 species were planted with my own money and hard work. In 1988, when I wanted to harvest a portion of the mature trees, I came up against the well-entrenched red tape of the Forest Dept. In short I was told that I was free to plant trees but not harvest them without their permission. The permission I soon found out was only forthcoming after payment of 'Nazrana' to all tiers of the forest bureaucracy. I dug in my heels and refused outright.Then followed a series of more than 100 letters from 1988 to 1994 (and thereafter with decreasing frequency) that I wrote in the English newspapers exposing the Forest Dept's corruption with names, locations and amounts demanded. Although the media cooperated wholeheartedly by printing each letter without omitting even a comma, there was no response whatsoever from anyone in the authority. On the contrary, those named as culprits were even promoted. (senior readers, especially Mr. O H Kabir of The Black Gold of Cox's Bazar Beach fame will remember). The letters and articles fully exposed how the colonial Forest Act of 1927 had been efficiently adapted for corrupt practices; corruption was institutionalised and in many respects even legalised. After threats and attacks on my family as a consequence, I was forced to leave Chittagong in 1993 and have been working for my living since then in Dhaka. The trees on the farm were totally decimated within months, involving hundreds of trucks and labourers. Discreet enquiries from Dhaka revealed that no one saw anything or knew anything as to what happened to the thousands of trees worth crores of taka that had to travel a short distance of 18 kms through the forests and other check-posts to reach the markets in Chittagong. In one of my letters I had estimated, as per productivity on my farm, that the Forest Dept's income from forest acreage under their possession should not be less than Tk 1,200 crore yearly. That year they had shown a mere Tk. 43 crore and I had posed the query as to what had happened to the remaining Tk.1,150 crore approximately. Now 74 years old and still working 10/12 hours a day for my living, I feel a sense of relief that perhaps my stubborn convictions, efforts and losses may not have been in vain and that our land will once again become the verdant paradise it was 55 years back when I first saw it. But for that to happen, as I had also half-seriously suggested in a seminar to the World Bank team who formulated the 20 years Master Plan for our forests in the early 90's, at least 75% of the more corrupt staff should be put inside the Ban Bhaban and the whole lot "blown up".
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