The forest official has contradicted his own statement that he had made earlier saying the starting of the spraying of oil neutraliser in the oil spill-hit Sela River of Sundarbans.
Now, he said he forgot what he had said earlier regarding the powder spraying.
At first Divisional Forest Officer of the Sundarbans east zone Amir Hossain Chowdhury told the Dhaka Tribune that an expert team started spraying Spark Scent, a powdered substance, to neutralise the oil which was spilled due to a tanker capsize with more than 350,000 litres of furnace oil in the Sela River of Sundarbans.
According to him, the team started the power spraying around 5:15pm on Thursday, 59 hours after the incident took place.
Earlier, Amir had also said power spraying would be continued for the next 12 hours.
However, locals said powder spraying was kept stop 10 minutes after it was started.
Now, Amir says, “I forgot what I told you earlier. There happened nothing like spray.”
He also said that the permission from both the Chittagong port and the environment department would be required to begin spraying the substance in the river. The process of getting the permission was underway.
Earlier, Hossain said Kandari 10 arrived with the dispersant chemical and the expert team around 4:30pm.
The sunken oil tanker was rescued from Sela River in the Sundarbans, 55 hours after it capsized with more than 350,000 litres of furnace oil.
A vessel with over 3,50,000 litres of furnace oil capsized in Sela River Tuesday morning. The oil spread along 20 kilometres of the Sela River seriously threatening the delicate ecology which is also home to the Royal Bengal Tiger.
The Sela River is known as a sanctuary for sweet-water Irawaddy and brackish-water Ganges dolphins, which are likely to be the first victims of the oil spill.