Stone dumping degrades Jaflong tourist site

Better known as a tourist site for its beautiful sweeping landscapes, Sylhet's Jaflong is suffering from stone collection, with associated machinery and stones recklessly dumped across the area, including in forest land.

“We conducted a drive against stone extraction recently,” says Gowainghat upazila nirbahi officer Md Salah Uddin. “During the drive, the taskforce seized and destroyed four stone extraction machines and eight crushing machines. They also destroyed around fifty illegal structures established on public land.” He says the drive will be restarted in order to continue protecting Jaflong's environment.

Yet when The Daily Star visited the area, forest land was still littered with stone crushing equipment and rock piles.

According to local environmentalists, during the last caretaker government's period priority was given to forestation, and stone-extraction related activities were brought under regulation through a zoning system. Such initiatives seem to have fallen by the wayside in more recent years.

“Some illegal dumping on forest land has occurred,” says Bablu Bokht, president of the local stone mill owners' association.

Mostafizur Rahman, assistant director at the environment department meanwhile, told The Daily Star that his department would launch drives targeting stone businesses illegally using forest lands.

Shah Shaheda Akhtar, regional coordinator of Bangladesh Environmental Lawyers' Association in Sylhet, says natural forest in Jaflong is disappearing due to the impact of illegal stone excavation and processing establishments.

Sylhet's divisional forest officer RFM Monirul Islam says whole-hearted efforts are ongoing, to protect the forest land. “We have started to construct a guide wall around the forest so that it could easily be protected from stone and machinery dumping,” he says.