The High Court on Thursday gave the government and the police 48 hours to stop industrial waste dumping in the Buriganga River at Shyampur.
In the directives, the court also summoned the department of environment director general and its director for enforcement to appear before it on February 5 to explain their failures in complying with several directive it had issued earlier to protect rivers.
A bench of Justice Quazi Reza-Ul Hoque and Justice ABM Altaf Hossain issued the rule and the directive as Supreme Court lawyer Manzill Morshed appearing for Human Rights and Peace for Bangladesh drew the court’s attention to continuing dumping of industrial waste in the Buriganga as several newspapers reported.
The court asked the Dhaka deputy commissioner to depute a mobile court to punish owners and employees of industries found dumping wastes in the Buriganga River at Shyampur.
The officer-in-charge of Shyampur police station was asked to deploy force to guard the banks of the Buriganga so that no one could pollute it by dumping industrial wastes.
The court directed the shipping secretary to form a committee comprising officials from Bangladesh Inland Water Transport Authority, the environment ministry as well as the industries to curb industrial waste dumping in the Buriganga.
The court also issued a rule asking the government authorities to explain in two weeks why they would not be directed to stop dumping industries waste in the Buriganga at Shyampur and why they failed to prevent its pollution.
The authorities took no action to protect four rivers passing by Dhaka ignoring a series of directives issued by the High Court, submitted Manzill.
He also referred the directives set in the High Court’s order of June 25, 2009 for stopping all sorts of encroachment and earth-filing in the four rivers –Buriganga, Turag, Balu and Sitalakhya passing by the capital.
Poribesh Bachao Andalan said that textile mills, dyeing factories and washing plants from the DND area in Shyampur regularly discharge untreated coloured liquid wastes into the Buriganga.
According to PBA report released Tuesday there is no aquatic life in the highly polluted Buriganga River.
An expert team from POBA found the Buriganga River inhospitable to aquatic life.
Courtesy of New Age
