Rajuk razing trees, filling wetlands

A village woman along with her granddaughter shows a group of green activists, experts and journalists how trees on a vast tract of land were razed to the ground for the development of land for the Purbachal housing project in Kaliganj upazila, Gazipur yesterday. Photo: Rashed Shumon

The Rajdhani Unnayan Kartripakkha (Rajuk) authorities are violating laws and deviating from the original plans of the Purbachal housing project as they have been filling wetlands, lowlands as deep as 15 feet and felling trees in the area in Gazipur, environmentalists and experts said yesterday.
“The original plan for Purbachal area was to develop it maintaining the original characteristics of the land. But here we find the original development plan and the ground reality are not the same,” said Dr Abu Sayeed, president of the Institute of Architects of Bangladesh.
They were supposed to earth-fill land with a maximum depth of six feet, he said, while visiting the project area in Kaliganj upazila with some environmental bodies and journalists.
The Gazipur district administration has acquired around 1,589 acres of land in five villages, for which it is offering owners only Tk 1 lakh and a five-katha plot for one bigha of land.

The team inspects an area where wetlands were earth-filled. Photo: Rashed Shumon

Villagers said many of them, unwilling to give up their land, were yet to take monetary compensations and that they were under pressure to move out as Rajuk was rushing to implement the project.
Nearly 10,000 people, mostly farmers and fishermen, live in the area. For years, they have preserved sal trees on their private land.
A 2010 land survey by Rajuk shows that 42.46 percent of the area is covered by forest, 39.47 percent by cultivable land, and 9.75 percent by homesteads. The rest consists of waterbodies, roads, playgrounds, commercial area, graveyards and canals.
A Department of Environment report in 2010 says the housing project will ruin the ecologically-rich area where tree coverage is better than that in the Bhawal National Park.
The Rajuk authorities have made false statements to the High Court, saying they would preserve the environment while developing the area, said Abu Kamal, chairman of Uttarkhan union, whose ancestral home lies in the project area. But the authorities have razed the sal forest, destroyed the fruit orchards, he alleged.
“Police have filed a police murder case accusing 55 locals and around 1,500 others as the villagers were protesting against Rajuk's acquiring of land,” he said.

Lehaz Uddin, 70, of Basabasi village has lost his mental balance after losing five bighas of his ancestral land to the project in exchange for compensation too inadequate to make up for what he lost. Photo: Rashed Shumon

Having lost his litchi grove on around 100 decimals of land which was the lone source of his family income, Lehaz Uddin, 70, of Basabasi village, has lost his mental balance, said villagers, while Suruj Mia, 55, of Kalikuthi village showed his family graveyard where his mother and daughter lay buried but was destroyed during land acquisition.
Abu Naser Khan, chairman of Poribesh Bachao Andolon (Poba), said the Rajuk authorities were violating laws enacted to protect wetlands and forests. Fruit orchards, graveyards, or croplands are no different, he added.
Around 6,000 acres of land--some 1,600 acres in Gazipur and the rest in Narayanganj--has been acquired for the Purbachal New Town Project of Rajuk.