Unplanned structures blur beauty of Cox’s Bazar beach

Unplanned and unauthorised construction of hotels and motels in Cox’s Bazar town and adjoining areas have blurred the beauty of the world’s largest sea beach.
Mayor and local administration, two main custodians of the 105-km long natural beach, said the beach town has 400 hotels, motels, resorts and guest houses, but only 60 of them have taken approval from the proper authorities before their constructions.
‘The Cox’s Bazar is losing its main and rare characteristics — sea in the front and hills in the rear – which gives a spectacular view to thousands of domestic and international tourists in the beach town,’ mayor Sarwar Kamal told the news agency recently.
Sarwar Kamal said his municipality could not control the illegal construction even up to last year because the hotel-motel zone, which was supposed to be a residential area in the original plan, was outside the periphery of Cox’s Bazar municipality.
The area has, however, come under the municipality in 2009 after its expansion to 30 square km from merely a 10 square km, he added.
‘I have been shouting for long to develop Cox’s Bazar, Inani, Teknaf, Saint Martin and Sonadia Islands under a single master plan,’ said Sarwar Kamal, mayor for last nine years, giving thanks to the present government for taking the initiative finally.
The government, he said, has initiated the formulation of the master plan, encompassing all the tourist spots along the beach spreading over 105 kilometres from Cox’s Bazar to Shah Porir Dwip in Teknaf as well as adjoining Saint Martin’s Island, the only offshore coral island of the country in the Bay of Bengal.
He, however, urged the government to implement the master plan, which had also been attempted during deposed president HM Ershad, but that was executed later. Implementation is equally or more important that adopting the master plan, he observed.
The draft plan is likely to be completed by a consultant company by September this year, said an official of the Civil Aviation and Tourism Ministry.
He said the Beach Master Plan would give clear guidelines for beach development to all and construction of infrastructures with proper building code, now completely absent.
‘The way constrictions are going unabated would soon force hills to disappear from vicinity of the tourists due to high rise constructions and hill cutting,’ the additional deputy commissioner, Mohammad Nurul Amin Nizami, told journalists.
The district administration is preparing a list of the unauthorised structures in hotel-motel zone, he said without clarifying future course of action against those buildings.
In a separate step, the government last month cancelled allotment of nearly 59 plots of the hotel-motel zone as those were distributed among the BNP-Jamaat party fellows, who failed to comply with the condition of lease that include beginning of construction within three years after the allotment.
The president of the Hotel-Motel Association, Abul Kashem Shikder, said
it was urgent to list the unauthorised hotels, motels and resorts and guest houses, but deferred with a common idea of demolition of the structures.
The government can confiscate the unauthorised buildings and should only demolish provided some were found risky from civil engineering, civil aviation and environment point of views, he said.
He also welcomed the big real-estate companies investing in tourism sector in Cox’s Bazar, but urged them to develop hotels, motels and studio apartments after clearance from concerned authorities.

Courtesy of BSS via NewAgebd