Politicians blamed
Speakers at a programme yesterday said successive governments had failed to protect the country's rivers as the political will was lacking.
They came up with the observation at a meeting on saving the river Boral at the auditorium of Bangladesh Economic Society in the capital.
With support of the Oxfam Bangladesh, the Riverine People organised the event chaired by Dr Abdul Matin, secretary general of the Bangladesh Poribesh Andolon (BAPA).
A researcher on the river Boral, Mahbub Siddiq, said leaders and activists of two main political parties had been grabbing the river and turning it into ponds of stagnant water.
Dr Qazi Khaliquzzaman, chairman of Palli Karma Sahayak Foundation (PKSF), said there were plenty of laws, rules and guidelines for the protection of rivers.
But it was likely that the river grabbers would be above the law due to their political connections, he added.
Syeda Rizwana Hasan, chief executive of the Bangladesh Environmental Lawyers' Association (BELA), said the politicians had lavished a lot of words for the river Buriganga, but they had not done anything significant to save the river.
Though the Boral movement had received comparatively less attention than the Buriganga movement, much work had been done to save Boral, she noted.
As the course of the river had changed a lot, it would be hard to revive it, Engineer M Inamul Haq told the meeting.
Many portions of Boral had been taken under fishery projects labelling those as stagnant water bodies, said SM Mizanur Rahman, secretary general of the Riverine People.
He warned that such initiatives would be disastrous for ecology and biodiversity of the river.
“We had never treated a river the way it should have been treated,” said Dr Ishtiaq Sobhan, country representative of the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN).
It was not impossible to recover the grabbed river if the government was sincere about it, he added.
Abu Sayeed Khan, managing editor of the Daily Samakal suggested the “Save the Boral River” movement be turned into a political issue.
Earlier, M Anwar Hossain, senator of the Riverine People, delivered the welcome speech.
Tofayel Ahmed, Sharifuzzaman Sharif, Shamser Ali, Suman Shams, among others, spoke.
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