Bela serves legal notice to govt to free 54 rivers from pollution, prosecute offenders

Bangladesh Environmental Lawyers Association (Bela) today served a legal notice to the government, demanding it to formulate a time-based action plan in order to free 54 rivers across the country from pollution and to prosecute the polluters.

In the legal notice, the environmental organisation asked the authorities concerned to identify the sources of pollution of the rivers, prepare a list of the persons responsible for it, to prevent the pollution, to bring them to the book of law and punish them properly and to collect compensation from them.

Bela, in the legal notice, asked the notice recipients to declare the extremely polluted and dying rivers as ecologically critical entities and maintain and manage those accordingly.

The legal notice have been sent to the secretaries at the ministries of environment, forest and climate change; industries; shipping; land; fisheries and livestock; water resources; agriculture; finance; public administration; and local government department; chairman of National River Conservation Commission; inspector general of police; director general of Bangladesh Water Development Board; director general of Department of Environment; and chairman of Bangladesh Inland Water Transport Authority.

In the legal notice, the organisation mentioned 54 polluted rivers including Buriganga, Brahmaputra, Padma, Meghna, Jamuna, and Teesta.

Bela said in the legal notice that it has identified the polluted rivers on the basis of research conducted by different organisations and individuals, and newspaper reports.

In their respective research, the result of the pollution on six rivers around Dhaka -- Buriganga, Turag, Balu, Shitalakhya, Dhaleshwari and Meghna -- has been disclosed, the legal notice said.