Save the lakes

The dredging of the Buriganga river that got underway in January unearthed scores of individuals claiming to be the legitimate owners of the banks of the river and even the river channel itself. Now, it seems that it is the surface of the Gulshan-Baridhara-Banani lake that is under threat.

Four years ago Rajuk initiated a project to end encroachment of the lake. The idea was to build a walkway around it, thus putting an end to the illegal occupation of the lake for residential purposes, and to permanently demarcate the area of the lake. Rajuk filled up a sizeable portion of the lake and earmarked some land on the banks of the lake to this end.

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Mysterious plots have now surfaced on the filled up land and been converted into sprawling and squalid residential slums that house hundreds if not thousands of the capital's otherwise homeless population.

The neglect of the lakes and rivers that run through Dhaka city has gone on long enough. If we are not dumping untreated sewage into these bodies of water, turning them into vast septic tanks that breed disease, we are busy filling them in and building on them, precipitating an environmental disaster.

The problem with the encroachment on the lake is not the impoverished communities that have sprouted there and pay extortionate rent to the ostensible owners of the property on which they are squatting. The real problem is these "owners" who have unlawfully laid claim to the filled in land and are using it to turn a profit.

Let us make no mistake, land is grabbed, occupied and rented out because it is profitable to do so. If we wish to put an end to this kind of grabbing of public land (or water) the government needs to move against those who are making money out of the situation and not focus its wrath on the slum-dwellers occupying the land.