Editorial
Dredging the Balu
Half measures won't do
BIWTA's plan to go ahead with dredging the Balu river without following the taskforce recommended width of 100 meters will be thoroughly counterproductive we feel. The reason offered by the inland water transport authority cuts no ice.
The river has been encroached upon and the illegal occupants must be expelled from government land. If the original width of the river, as per record, was between 200 and 250 feet, there is little ground for the authorities to take refuge in the argument that extending the width of the river to near its original width will involve massive requisition of private land. These lands are not private, and we fully agree with the environmentalists that should it require acquisition of land to save an important part of the capital's lifeline so be it. It is not as if the administration has stopped taking over land for developmental works. And amelioration of a very serious problem of Dhaka city by solving its drainage system should merit very high consideration in the list of development works of the government.
The BIWTA ought not to overlook the grave environmental hazard that the capital will be made to face as a result of taking a half measure with regard to a near-moribund river. If the BIWTA insists on dredging the river restricting to only a width of 37 meters instead of the recommended 100 meters, one could ask why the task force at all and why the wasted time of the experts committee if the recommendations are to be discarded out of hand?
As it is, Dhaka has been divested of the many rivers and channels that used to serve it, either because of population pressure or due to natural causes. Most of the catchment areas that had served Dhaka has been filled up, most of it illegally. The immense difficulty the city's population is subject to after every light shower these days need not be restated. Corrective measures must not be put off, but half measures are worse than no measures at all, as the BIWTA plan may well turn out to be.
This is a test case for giving effect to a recommended solution of a committee set up by the government, where the cost of failure would be high. We join in the call to go back to the well considered recommendations of the task force and implement them in toto.
For all latest news, follow The Daily Star's Google News channel.
Comments