Three years ago, when the National River Conservation Commission revealed a mind boggling number of 65,127 grabbers feasting on river lands all over Bangladesh, people thought the government would take swift action to save the rivers from the hands of encroachers and polluters.
NRCC—a statutory body mandated by the government to help protect the country’s 770 rivers and other water bodies from illegal occupants and pollution—has made repeated pleas to all district administrations to move quickly and implement crash programs to free the country’s rivers from the clutches of grabbers, but little progress was made.
With high levels of pollution discharged into its waters and illegal encroachments along various points of its shorelines, Dhaka’s lifeline, the Buriganga, becomes further choked.
Now, a task force commissioned by the interim government of Prof Muhammad Yunus in September last year has issued a fervent call to do everything within the government’s disposal to save the Buriganga.
The Buriganga River, which flows through Dhaka, is considered ancient, with its origins dating back to the pre-Mughal period—before 1608—when the city of Dhaka was established as a major trading center on its banks by the Mughal emperors. The name “Buriganga” itself translates to “old Ganges,” indicating its historical connection to the Ganges river system.
The task force, led by former director general of the Bangladesh Institute of Development Studies (BIDS), Dr KAS Murshid, submitted its report to the government last week.
It stated that, as the Buriganga River is on the brink of extinction, urgent action is needed for the survival of both the river and Dhaka.
In early September last year, the Yunus government formed a 12-member task force on “Re-strategizing the Economy and Mobilizing Resources for Equitable and Sustainable Development.”
The task force says the government must send a decisive message affirming its commitment to the critical undertaking of saving Dhaka and the Buriganga.
"If necessary, emergency legislation should be enacted to facilitate immediate, unimpeded action for this project. Leadership should come from a dedicated minister or adviser, supported by a strong technical and legal team," it observes.
Given the expected resistance from vested interests, it is vital to seek special judicial dispensations to avert potential sabotage.
"With rivers granted the right to life under the law, this emergency response would be fully warranted. Let the restoration of Dhaka begin with its rivers," the report recommends.
Is the Buriganga dying?
With its shorelines being encroached upon by illegal land grabbers at various points and the unabated discharge of untreated industrial effluents into its waters, the Buriganga appears to be on its deathbed. Sometimes, environmental activists have even declared the river “clinically dead,” given that no fish or fauna can thrive in its extremely polluted, pitch-black waters.
Year after year, the NRCC raised concerns over various government agencies’ total indifference in taking appropriate measures to revive a dying river. It even found that some government agencies had their share of river land encroachments as well.
In one of its latest annual reports, the NRCC stated that it was made a party to as many as 132 cases pending with the Appellate Division, High Court Division, and subordinate courts across the country, several dozen of which were related to people who either grabbed or were responsible for polluting the Buriganga.
Directed by the highest court of the country when the NRCC compiled a list of over 65,000 river grabbers back in January 2022, a quarter of those grabbers were from the Dhaka division alone, and many were linked to encroachments on rivers around the capital zone, including the Buriganga.
What do the authorities say?
As recently as December last year, a government adviser announced that the government would soon conduct an operation to free the Buriganga from pollution during this winter, and that the Shipping Ministry would provide all necessary support—including manpower and equipment—to clean the river. He emphasized the need for coordinated efforts by the concerned ministries to save the country’s rivers from illegal grabbing and pollution.
“We’ll soon start an operation to free the Buriganga from pollution during this winter. The Shipping Ministry will provide support to conduct the operation. The Buriganga and other major rivers have lost navigability, mainly due to grabbing and industrial pollution,” Shipping Affairs Adviser Dr M Sakhawat Hussain told a city seminar.
“We must free the rivers from encroachment and pollution to save the environment,” he added.
Earlier, in September last year, Environment Adviser Syeda Rizwana Hasan sought assistance from the United States in cleaning the Buriganga River and mapping its major polluting sources. She made this request when the then US charge d'affaires in Dhaka, Helen LaFave, met her at her office in the Bangladesh Secretariat.
Even before that, within two weeks of taking charge of the Environment Ministry, Rizwana announced support from the Asian Development Bank (ADB) for what she dubbed “low-cost” river cleaning projects targeting the Buriganga, Turag, and Balu rivers.
