Discarded notes, no magic realism

On Sunday, locals in Bogura’s Shajahanpur upazila woke to what seemed to be an absurd sight: bank notes floating in a waterbody near the Khaowra bridge area.

In some South Asian countries, there is a common belief that water brings money. This belief comes from the Chinese pseudoscience called “Feng Shui” and in Cantonese, the word water is often used to refer to “money”.

However, no magic or Feng Shui was involved in Shajahanpur.

What was revealed later was that the discarded notes were from Bangladesh Bank, which gave them to the Bogura municipality to dump.

People began noticing notes of Tk 100, 500 and 1,000 floating in the beel and washed up on the banks in the morning, said Sumon Mia, a local of the upazila.

On information, police visited the spot at 11:00am yesterday and recovered five sacks of discarded notes.

Azim Uddin, officer-in-charge of the Shajahanpur police station, said, “After we were informed about the matter, we contacted the authorities of Bangladesh Bank’s Bogura branch. They told us that the discarded notes were from the bank and they gave those to the Bogura municipality to dump those.”

According to the bank guidelines, rejected bank notes are burned in incinerators in 800-1,000 degrees Centigrade. But the bank claims it did not opt for that due to “environmental concerns”.  

Asked, Jagannath Chandra Ghosh, acting executive director of the bank’s branch, said, “We have a huge number of rejected notes, especially the big notes. Burning them would cause a lot of air pollution.

Therefore, we gave it to the Bogura municipality to throw them in their dumping areas. Unfortunately, they dumped it in the beel. It’s their fault.”

He added that they have around 1,800-2,000 sacks of discarded bank notes, which the bank authorities dispose in one of two ways -- either burning them or giving them to the municipality to take care of it.

The bank urged the municipality to dump a large number of rejected notes on Friday. Two days later, the bank requested for a trash container big enough for their branch to dispose of the notes, after which the municipality voluntarily began taking the sacks of discarded notes for dumping.

 Mamunur Rashid, in-charge of the municipality’s conservancy department, said, “We have certain places to dump garbage. The bank requested that we dump the notes there. But our truck driver, who lives close to the waterbody, unfortunately dumped 15-18 sacks of rejected bank notes, and other things, into the beel.

“It was a mistake. We will dispose of the rest of the rejected notes in our designated dumping site.”

Meanwhile, an administration officer of the municipality, wishing anonymity, claimed the municipality itself made the wrong decision to dumping the rejected notes in the water.

The municipal authorities were supposed to take permission from the UNO to dump their waste in the area.

 Speaking to The Daily Star, Fuara Khatun, Shajahanpur Upazila Nirbahi Officer, said, “The Bogura municipal authority has no specific dumping site as far as I know. They did not take my permission to dump the rejected notes in Shajahanpur upazila. Therefore, it’s not legal,” she said.

Contacted, Md Ashrafuzzaman, director of the department of environment (DoE) in Rajshahi division, said, “No one should dump such notes into a waterbody. It will be harmful for all aquatic lives in the body.”

Explaining further, Masud Rana, a chemist of the Bogura DoE office said, “Bank notes contain painting ink and a highly toxic pollutant called Dioxin which can seriously damage the health of fish and other living things in the waterbody.”

While the blame game goes on, people are still recovering from the awe of what they had witnessed.