Dumping of untreated wastes in an open filed of the Sylhet city has exposed public health and environment to severe threat for more than two decades.
Local people have complained that garbage, including household and clinical wastes, is not only creating public nuisance, but also putting adverse impact on the biodiversity and natural resources in the locality.
Water bodies, including Bayra River, near the Sylhet City Corporation’s wastes dumping yard at Lalmatiya of Dakkhin Surma in the city, have already become devoid of fish because of the poisonous garbage, local people have alleged.
Mokabbir Ali, a resident of the city’s Shibbari near Lalmatiya, has told New Age that the piled-up wastes spill into the nearby Bayra River, croplands and two major water-bodies including Lohajuri Haor and Meddi Beel in the rainy season in the absence of any boundary wall around the dumping yard.
‘Fertility of croplands in the area has already decreased because of the chemical substances generated from the dumped clinical wastes. River and marshlands in the locality have also become fishless as their water is extremely polluted because of the poisonous garbage,’ he claimed.
Rakib Ahmed, a college student of Gotatikar in the city, has alleged that people living around Lalmatiya have been contracting different deadly diseases since the inception of the dumping ground.
‘The pedestrians and commuters are compelled to cross the area holding their nose due to bad smell emitting from the waste dumping yard,’ he added.
Sources in the SCC said a piece of some seven acres of land along the Fenchuganj Road at Lalmatiya, the southeast end of the city, was acquired for the dumping yard in 1988 by the authorities of the erstwhile Sylhet Municipality.
Deputy director of Sylhet environment department SM Fazlul Karim has said that the dumped wastes in the open ground is putting adverse impact on biodiversity side-by-side polluting the natural environment.
According to the data available with the SCC conservancy section, some 220 tonnes of household and medical wastes and those generated from the commercial units such as vegetable, fruit and fish markets of 27 wards in the city are being dumped every day in the open dumping yard, that causes serious pollution to the ecological balance in the surrounding areas.
Talking to New Age, Shahjalal University of Science and Technology civil and environmental engineering professor Jahir Bin Alam said the clinical wastes dumped in the open ground was risky not only for the public health and environment in the city and its neighbouring areas.
‘It is also affecting the villagers of remote areas where the rainwater carries the toxicity from the dumping ground in the rainy season,’ he said, adding that the city corporation authorities must take a waste management system without any further delay to save public health and environment.
Being contacted, SCC chief engineer Nur Azizur Rahman has told New Age that a part of the boundary wall along the Fenchuganj road has already been constructed as part of the efforts to reduce public nuisance.
‘The city corporation authorities have also signed a memorandum of understanding with a United Kingdom-based multinational company in November last year for waste management,’ the SCC engineer said.
-With New Age input
