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Land grabbers fill up a part of the Turag, narrowing the river, at Kamarpara of Tongi to set up a filling station there. Photo: STAR
A long stretch of the Turag River circling the capital is being encroached upon and filled up again rendering a large section of the city clearly susceptible to major flooding.
No government agency has yet made any move to stop this pernicious practice.
Private CNG filling stations, private universities, and houses are being built on the lands that were developed on the encroached upon sections of the river, while some of the lands are also being sold.
Local residents said most of the encroachers are influential people having clout over the civil administration, which they alleged sometime help the encroachers to fill up the river.
Due to the wholesale encroachment, the Turag has now turned into a veritable narrow canal, at some places which is filled at both banks leaving only 20 feet to 30 feet of flow with just a minimum navigability for a sand carrying tug boat.
While visiting the river, this correspondent saw long stretches of it by Tongi-Ashulia Road already filled at five points, by influential people for setting up CNG filling stations.
Local residents said the encroachers first stake out their boundaries on the slopes of the banks with bamboo or wooden sticks and claim ownerships of those sections by putting up signs that read ‘private property’.
Later they dump sand into the marked areas and develop lands on the encroached upon sections of the river up to the height of the adjacent highway to build establishments there, the residents added.
For years the encroachers have been carrying out the practice without any intervention from any government agency.
During the visit this correspondent also saw the river was being dredged with dredging machines which had been brought in by the encroachers to pump out sand from the river bed so they might use those to fill up ‘their section’ of the river.
Interestingly, the ‘owners’ of all the ‘freshly developed lands’ sport signs that read ‘government approved’.
In Dhaur area, adjacent to Ashulia-Tongi Road, a long stretch of the river bank and its slope is already filled up and developed by the owner of Zahan Group. On a corrugated tin fence that separates the land from the road the following is written: ‘No Trespassing –Zahan CNG Station’. It also sports a license number ‘101-2-(Chha) 8698. No less than 20 workers were working inside the fenced up ‘property’.
Three months ago, this correspondent had seen another signboard of ‘Partex CNG’ adjacent to Zahan Group’s ‘property’, but this time around the signboard of Partex CNG was not there. Now Zahan Group is developing both plots.
Just after Zahan Group’s ‘property’ another signboard reads ‘Uttara University’. Next to the ‘property’ of Uttara University, another large section of the river is currently being filled up.
The local people said the owner of Tasin CNG Station bought that piece of land to set up a CNG filling station there.
The carnival of encroachment left the Turag River in such a bad condition just next to the ‘Bishaw Ijtema’ field that an engine boat can barely pass through the section.
Experts said the Turag plays a very important role for Dhaka city’s flood safety, as flood water flows south into the Bay of Bengal through this river from the adjacent districts situated at the upper northern side of the city. It is also the only river in the northern part of the city. If the river loses its width and depth the city will surely be vulnerable to massive flooding.
Executive Engineer of Division 2 of Bangladesh Water Development Board (BWDB) Md Masud Ahmed said although it seems that the structures were constructed on lands that had been developed by filling up the river, actually those are private lands.
Owners of different CNG filling stations and other establishments in the area had applied for permission to construct approach roads to their ‘properties’ through BWDB lands adjacent to the flood protection embankment there, he said.
“We gave permissions to a few owners to construct the approach roads about four years ago, and many are still being processed as per the rules of the government,” he added.
An official of Bangladesh Inland Water Transport Authority (BIWTA) however said 150 feet of land from the edge of a river is its foreshore which is under the jurisdiction of BIWTA, and to construct anything on that section of land, one must take permission from BIWTA.
“We did not give permission for any structure on the foreshore of the River Turag at those points,” he asserted.
In 2005, the government finished the first phase of the Circular Water Way project spending Tk 36 crore, so city residents may use the waterway to commute between the northern and southern parts of the city. BIWTA built some jetties and dredged the river so water transports may move easily.
Now, BIWTA is going to implement the second phase of the Circular Water Way project in the Balu river area.
But while the government agency is keen to build jetties on the riverbanks under the project, it has no activity for stopping the onslaught of encroachment upon the river.
July 21st, 2008 at 10:57 am
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