Wholesale thefts of stones from Sylhet quarries hogged newspaper headlines for the past few days, stirring a public outcry against the administration’s failure to keep the stealing in check.
What happening in Sylhet quarries, appears as a modern day staging of Aesop’s famous fable – killing the goose that lays the golden eggs.
The fable teaches that greed and short-sightedness can lead to the destruction of something that provides ongoing benefits.
Given the context, revisiting quickly a summary of the fable might not be a bad idea.
It goes like this – “Fallen into poverty and starving, a farmer has only a goose left in his possession. He plans to sell the fowl. However, the goose lays a golden egg, which the farmer is able to sell for a lot of money. Further golden eggs follow, and the farmer becomes rich. But consumed with greed, the farmer wants to get all the golden eggs at once, and cuts the goose open to get at them. There are no eggs there, and now that the goose is dead, no more eggs to come. The farmer is soon poor again.”
Bangladesh is blessed with 51 stone quarries but that does not suffice to its domestic requirements necessitating regular imports.
Over the years, injudicious exploitation of stones and other mineral resources – particularly, from some of the quarries those fall in ecologically critical areas (ECA) – forced the government to review and stop leasing the quarries for stone extraction in February, 2020.
In January this year the government lifted the leasing ban and opened up quarries for fresh lease, saving 12 ECA zone ones in Sylhet and Bandarban.
But most unfortunate part of such regulatory management is – officially leased or not-leased, illegal extraction of stones could never be stopped. The administration’s failure to enforce its own ban is well acknowledged in the minutes of an April 27 meeting held on quarry management with advisor in charge of power, energy and mineral resources, Muhammad Fouzul Kabir Khan presiding that over.
Bureau of Mineral Development (BMD) informed the meeting that though the leases were cancelled, the illegal and unauthorized stone extractions had been going on all along. In administrative drives, some parts of such illegally extracted stones were seized and sold in auctions – the meeting was informed. It was told that very recently from one quarry of Sylhet over 10 million cubic feet of illegally extracted stones were seized and half of those was sold in auction, depositing the sale proceeds to government coffer.
Advisor in charge of the environment, forest and climate change ministry, Syeda Rizwana Hasan, expressed concern over stone extraction from ECA zones and the meeting took note of it. Accordingly, some of the quarries, including few in Sylhet, were kept out of the purview of fresh leasing.
Are the stakeholders aligned?
To follow up their meeting decisions and see the ground reality, both the advisors paid a visit to Sylhet quarry zone in mid-June and found themselves in midst of an apparent unruly crowd that sought promise for opening up of the quarries.
Though they managed escape the unpleasant situation, the overall quarry environment gone from bad to worse thenceforth.
What the advisors transpired and wished, a completely contrasting message came from certain levels of the administration. Within three weeks of them visiting a hostile quarry in Sylhet, the commissioner concerned of the Sylhet division, said, on record: “If stone can be quarried all over the country, why not in Sylhet? We’ll review all decisions. If necessary lower and higher judiciaries are there. Government is for the people if people can’t survive what’s the use of having a government.”
This is really puzzling, to say the least.
Political economy came into play big time. In a display of rare unity, the political class of all shades in Sylhet put their weights behind a section of stone extractors, stone crusher, boat operators and even the ‘thieves’ too – who have been long into the act.
Even a major political party had to relinquish one of its quarry zone key figure from the party, apparently on charge of his involvement in stone theft.
Like the Aesop’s proverbial golden goose – the greed-driven local stone business lobby and their political beneficiaries – stole a huge volume of stones in broad daylight as well as at night, giving the mountain-side, alluvial riverbeds no ecological respite to rest and replenish.
The question of employment and livelihood of hundreds of people also warrant a right policy attention. The people, who have historically been depended on the extraction and crushing of stones, ferrying the stones by boats, and trucks etc., need alternate job opportunities.
Has the government worked much in that respect to buy in all stakeholders’ trust? The answer is, unfortunately – NO.
Unless, the stone miners, crushers, transport operators, local politicians and administration – all are aligned any plausible solution couldn’t be reached over Sylhet’s stone quarries. After all, nothing is written in stone.
