Int’l day of action for rivers: 100 acres of the Buriganga still occupied

Nearly 100 acres along the two banks of the Buriganga river remain filled up even after installation of  boundary pillars.

Most of these encroachment sites are in Kalindi, Zinzira, Shobhadya and Konda, which are on the Keraniganj side of the river.

On the Dhaka side, the filled-up area is in Kutubpur of Kamrangichar, shows a GIS-based survey conducted by River and Delta Research Centre (RDRC), a non-government organisation working on river protection.

From time to time, Bangladesh Inland Water Transport Authority (BIWTA) removed some of the structures built on the encroached land. But the land remains filled up.

Visiting Dhalchar area in Kamrangichar on Saturday, it was seen that the BIWTA pillars were set up without evicting the illegal grabbers.

A local influential named Hazi Md Manir Hossain set up a factory, grabbing a portion of the river in the area. The boundary walls of his house extend more than 10 feet beyond pillar no. 24 in Shrikhanda mouza.

His house is located at Jhauchar, Gudaraghat, next to Fatima Orphanage and Lillah boarding.

Adjacent plot owner Abul Hossain also grabbed a portion of the river to build a house that he rented to small readymade garment factories.

Buriganga Pillar no. 23 stands between the boundary pillars of the two plots. The entrance gates of both houses are also inside the river land.

The Daily Star could not contact them for comments.

Conducting a field visit and using Geographic Information System (GIS) in 2020-21, the RDRC also made a map of the Buriganga showing the filled-up area.

They found even after BIWTA's drive against encroachment, 98.75 acres were filled up with sand and mud.

"The quantity of the occupied land must have increased by now as we conducted the survey several months ago," said RDRC Chairman Mohammad Azaz.

He said they did the survey immediately after BIWTA conducted a major drive against encroachers.

On the Dhaka city side, the government built a walkway along the river bank.

"So, we did not see any new grabbers on this side," Azaz said.

But there have been fresh encroachments on the Keraniganj side to create commercial plots, he added.

"There are 90 shipyards along the Buriganga. All of them were set up filling up the river," he said, adding that much of the grabbing took place from 2015 to 2020.

Though the BIWTA recovered some of the land, most of the freed land remained filled up, the map shows.

Contacted, Gulzer Ali, joint director of BIWTA, said they have made the Buriganga "almost free of encroachment".

He admitted that they could not evict all the grabbers such as those who built mosques to occupy the river, but said any land inside the boundary pillars are river land and will be claimed as such.

"We are making a list of the remaining encroachers. All of them will be evicted," he warned.

Environment lawyer Syeda Rizwana Hasan said the authorities so far conducted most of the eviction  centring the Buriganga.

"Still, they could not make it fully free of encroachment," she said.

In fact, the government could not create an example of an encroachment-free river, she said.

In 2009, the High Court directed the government to demarcate the original territory of the four Dhaka rivers -- Buriganga, Turag, Balu and Shitalakhya -- to restore the river areas to their original state and protect them from pollution and grabbing.

The HC in its order had also directed the government to remove earth used to fill up the rivers and realise the cost from the grabbers. But the BIWTA is yet to do it.