Rangamati park turns into nursery

Nursery at Rangamati Poura Park.Photo: STAR

Rangamati Poura Park, the lone oldest recreational park in the hill district, has now turned into a nursery after the municipality authorities have leased out two thirds of its land to a businessman.
The nursery owner hung a big signboard reading “Poura Nursery” at the park.
The park was inaugurated on August 25 in 1985 to facilitate the people of Rangamati a sort of recreation. It remained uncared-for years.
The authorities floated a tender in a bid to construct a community centre on the middle of the park in 2004. The World Bank also donated Tk 12 crore in this regard. The authorities stopped the work the same year following a stay order by the High Court.
The court issued the stay order to the pourasabha chairman after Bangladesh Environmental Lawyers' Association (BELA) filed a writ petition against the construction. The municipality authorities also filed a petition against the order that the court dismissed. Alongside BELA, different environmentalist groups also came up with strong protest to stop construction of the community centre.
Sources said Pourasabha Chairman Habibur Rahman, failing to build the community centre, called an auction in 2005 where two thirds of the parkland was given to businessman Md Mozaffar Ahmed, who allegedly has close link with Habib, to build the nursery.
Some sheds and several trees of the park have been demolished during construction of the community centre. Later, most of the remaining sheds have also been damaged. But the authorities took no step so far either to reconstruct the sheds or beautification of the park. Taking advantage of their indifference, some illegal structures have also been raised at the park.
“We cannot enjoy beauty of the park now as major portion of it belongs to the nursery. The nursery owner made fences around major portion of the park, prohibiting entrance to the park," school students Riddhi Chakma and Alida Chakma said.
Former Pourasabha Chairman Kazi Nazrul Islam said immediate measures should be taken to protect the once beautiful park from ruination.
“The park is an invaluable asset of the hill town. Several hundred trees with wide range of variety were planted on the park. It's the oldest park in Rangamati and a place where people can take breath in serene wind. We have to protect this for our future generation,” he added.
Environmentalist Md Anwar Hossain said, "We are concerned about the ultimate fate of the park. “It must be protected. Rangamati is a tourism hill town but it very much lacks civic amenities.”
Mozaffar, however, said he is ready to return the nursery land to the authorities for greater interest of the town if they cancel the agreement.
He said he took a three-year lease to establish a nursery and have been paying Tk 300 a month to the pourasabha. He said its a government land and they can take it back any time by following rules.
Pourasabha Chairman Habib denied of awarding lease of the land to anybody, saying 'how can we give lease of a government land? We just gave Mozaffar permission for a nursery on temporary basis. The period is already over and the land is now ours.”