Chittagong district administration in a drive evicted another 25 risky corrugated iron-roofed houses from hill slopes in Chittagong’s Lalkhan Bazar yesterday to ward off possible landslide casualties.
The administration’s Assistant Commissioner Abu Hasan Siddique and Executive Magistrate Ruhul Amin led the nearly four-hour drive at Tankir Pahar area around 11am.
The executive magistrate said around 25 establishments were razed to the ground in the drive.
“Those living in the houses were too vulnerable to landslide in light of the incessant rains during the past few days.
“In addition, we have continued to make loudspeaker announcements, asking inhabitants in hill slopes to vacate their abodes and move elsewhere,” he said.
Ruhul said the district administration had arranged temporary shelter and food supply for the families that used to live in risky houses in the hills at Shahid Nagar Primary School in Lalkhan Bazar.
It is mostly people of the low-income groups who choose to live in foothills, putting themselves at risk of being landslide victims.
The district administration at the onset of the monsoon began carrying out drives in the hilly areas to evict people living in illegal and risky houses in a bid to save lives and properties.
According to the Chittagong DC office, around 666 families have been riskily living in the slopes of 25 hills in the district.
Some 200 people are estimated to have died in landslides during rainy seasons in the past eight years in Chittagong.