Writer and journalist Shahnaz Munni has demanded that authorities scrap a fresh attempt to grant environmental clearance to a mosquito coil factory in a residential area of Sonargaon upazila, Narayanganj, alleging that influential quarters are exploiting the appeals process after the plant's clearance was cancelled following nine separate government inspections.
Speaking at a press conference at the National Press Club on Monday morning, Munni said the Department of Environment (DoE) had inspected the proposed site of "Sharmin Chemical Works" in Nayapur village nine times over three to four years.
Each inspection, she said, found the area to be residential and concluded that a coil factory could not legally be established there under environmental law, given its proximity to a mosque, a temple and a women's madrasa in a densely populated locality.
Munni, who said she has lived in Nayapur for several years, alleged that despite the DoE ultimately cancelling the factory's siting clearance, the company later obtained clearance through an appeal to the ministry.
She claimed this happened during the tenure of the previous interim administration, and that when villagers raised the matter with the then environment adviser, he acknowledged the ministry should not have issued such a clearance and ordered a fresh probe.
A subsequent, more detailed investigation involving both DoE and ministry representatives found the mandatory one-kilometre buffer zone requirement had been violated, she said, leading to the cancellation of the appeal-granted clearance in December last year. However, she alleged the company has now filed another appeal, and that the appellate authority is set to hold a hearing on the matter on Thursday.
Munni questioned how a decision reached after nine inspections and a further detailed probe could be overturned in what she described as a 15-minute hearing, and asked how many times a rejected appeal could be resubmitted. She warned that repeated use of the appeal mechanism allows influential parties to secure clearances despite documented findings.
She also cited the case of "Imam Poultry Farm," a facility in the same locality that was shut down after a decade-long legal battle in which the higher courts ruled the area residential and unsuitable for industrial use. Establishing a coil factory, which she said would be far more polluting than a poultry farm, would effectively defy that court ruling, she argued.
Representing the mosque committee, Md Mainuddin Molla, and the temple committee, Sadhan Saha, along with poet and environmental campaigner Shahed Kayes, also spoke at the event, warning of severe air pollution and health risks to residents if the factory begins operation.
They warned the coil factory would cause severe pollution, respiratory illness and soil contamination, forcing residents to leave. Mandir committee president Sadhan Kumar Saha said the temple, over a century old, sits beside the site; toxic fumes running 24/7 would make worship impossible and pollution would spread up to three kilometres.
Speakers demanded that the DoE's decision to reject the factory's clearance be upheld, and called for amendments to the Bangladesh Environment Conservation Act, 1995, to make the DoE an autonomous body free from ministerial interference. She also urged that the ministry's Appellate Board be abolished in favour of an appeals mechanism through environmental courts, and appealed to the relevant ministry and the government to intervene and prevent further environmental degradation in Nayapur.
