Govt eyes Baleshwar river bank in
Barguna; environmentalists decry
Although the Sitakunda shipbreaking
yards in Chittagong
A team of top officials from different
departments, led by the additional secretary of the industries ministry,
recently visited the area and initially earmarked 52 acres of land for setting
up new shipbreaking yards
--- an industry categorised red by the Department of Environment, implying its
highly hazardous nature.
"It is the prime minister's wish
to set up the industry there and we have started the groundwork," said ABM
Khorshed, additional secretary of the Ministry of Industries. "We have found
the area suitable for shipbreaking, and we are preparing a report which will be
sent to the Prime Minister's Office within a week or two," he added.
Khorshed said the team would need to
collect local maps and check the depth of the Baleshwar river at its confluence
with the Bay of Bengal .
The 5-member team that visited the area
included the chief engineer of the Directorate of Shipping, managing director
of Chittagong Dry Dock, director, technical, of Steel & Engineering
Corporation, and a representative of Bangladesh Ship Breakers Association.
Shipbreaking yards in Sitakunda
continue to operate in unregulated fashion, and in the most rudimentary ways.
Every end-of-life ship is 25 to 30 years old, and contains highly hazardous
substances such as asbestos, PCB, PVC and lubricants.
The Sitakunda shipbreaking yards have
heavily polluted the land and air, as well as the bay, where fish species have
been wiped out.
Hundreds of people working in the
yards, almost totally unprotected owing to an absence of safety gear, are
exposed to toxins and fatal accidents.
Rizwana Hasan of the Bangladesh
Environmental Lawyers Association has come down hard on the plan. As she says,
"When the government has failed to regulate the existing shipbreaking
industries in Sitakunda, the expansion of this industry in another ecologically
sensitive coastal area by the Sundarbans is totally unacceptable."
"Does the government want to pollute
the coastal eco-system and destroy the coastal forests? Has it not learnt from
the polluted beaches, disappearing mangroves and heavily contaminated land and
water of Sitakunda?" she asked.
Ronald Halder, a bird specialist and
nature conservationist, said the Baleshwar river is the primary fishing zone
for thousands of people in the area, and the largest in the country, and
jeopardising the river will be a disaster for millions.
"Moreover, the Sundarbans is near.
Such a hazardous industry will threaten the entire eco-system there," he
added.
Due to a lack of regulations, Bangladesh
If scrap ships continue to arrive at
the current rate, the country within the next 20 years will be left with 79,000
tons of asbestos and 2,70,000 tons of polychlorinated bi-phenyl, both of which
are non-recyclable hazardous wastes.
Source: The Daily Star. Morshed Ali Khan. 10 October 2010
http://www.thedailystar.net/newDesign/news-details.php?nid=205889
 |
Sundarbans, the world's largest mangrove forest: one of the front-line contestants among 28 finalists for new 7 wonders of the world contest (on-going).
|
The Sundarbans delta, at the mouth of
the Ganges River ,
is the largest mangrove forest in the world, spreading across parts of Bangladesh
No comments:
Post a Comment