Two committees, formed after a series of landslides on June 11 in 2007 which killed 126 people, made 36-point recommendations to avert such incidents, but many of the recommendations have not been implemented yet.
More than 50 thousand people were living at vulnerable hill slopes in different parts of the city during the series of landslides, but according to a survey, the number of people has risen to 10 lakh in the city and the district in recent times.
The committees, headed by then divisional commissioner MN Siddique, recommended evacuating people from the risky hill areas and taking measures to rehabilitate them.
The committees in the reports also recommended preparing a national hill management policy, imposing ban on brick kilns within 10 kilometres and on housing projects within five kilometres from hills.
Other recommendations include forming vigilance team to check new settlements in risky areas, construction of retaining and boundary walls immediately in different risky hills, massive afforestation and harsh punishment for hill cutters.
Department of Environment Deputy Director Zafar Alam, also head of a seven-member committee formed last year to detect vulnerable hills, told the Dhaka Tribune that 13 hills had been found risky in 2007 when 50,000 people were living at vulnerable hill slopes.
“We have found 30 hills vulnerable in the district during a recent survey while at least 10 lakh people have been living at hill slopes,” he said, adding that all the people living at hill slopes are not at risk.
According to the recent survey, CRB hill, Tiger-pass hill, Prabartak, Golpahar, Ishpahani hill, Batali hill, DC hill, AK Khan hill, James Finley hill, Forest Research Institute hill, Lake City residential area hill, City Corporation Hill, the hill adjacent to Foy’s Lake and a number of hills at Salimpur at Sitakunda upazila and Chittagong University, are among the vulnerable hills.
Divisional Commissioner Mohammed Abdullah told the Dhaka Tribune that the process was on to implement the recommendations, adding that they had undertaken short, medium and long-term measures as per the recommendations of the committees.
“We have implemented many of short and midterm recommendations, but implementation of long-term recommendations is not possible locally,” he said. They had forwarded the long-term recommendations to the higher authority.
“We are trying to relocate the people living at vulnerable hill slopes, but it is not possible to relocate a huge number of people under any short term measure,” he said, adding that they had taken an initiative to relocate 666 families immediately.
He also said seven to eight thousand people were evacuated from the risky areas after the landslide in 2007, but most of them had returned later as they could not be rehabilitated elsewhere.
A hill management committee also selected 27 acres of khas land in Hathazari upazila for relocating people from risky areas, but the plan was changed later.
Committee sources said they were forced to change the plan as the land falls into the firing range of Bangladesh Army, adding that they had later selected six acres of land in Kalurghat area owned by the Bangladesh Railway.
The sources also said they had plans to set up a rehabilitation centre on the land with accommodation for 2,400 families.
Apart from the deaths of 126 people in 2007, landslides killed 17 people in city’s Ambagan area in 2011 and 11 people in Lalkhan Bazar in 2008. Also, seven were killed in landslide in 2002, 16 in 2000 and 19 in 1999.
