Take steps to protect environment

The BNP-Jamaat government has been supplying gas to different foreign companies by depriving the countrymen, the AL leaders alleged and called for proper utilisation of gas resources.

They also stressed the need for reviving the jute industry and promoting jute products, maintaining navigability of the rivers through regular dredging and taking steps to reduce the intensity of floods.

The AL leaders were speaking at a press conference in the city on the eve of the World Water Day. The AL sub-committee on forest and environmental affairs organised the press conference.

The leaders called for proper waste management in big cities, including the capital, planned urbanisation and implementation of the building code and protection of forest resources and cultivable lands.

They blamed the alliance government for destroying the ecological balance as well as political and economic stability. The previous AL government had taken a number of projects to protect the environment, but this government has halted all those, they added.

Presenting a keynote paper, sub-committee Chairman Dr Hasan Mahmud said the AL had taken up a bio-diversity project to save the Sunderbans, but the coalition government "stopped this project in a bid to plunder the forest resources."

He also criticised the government for destroying the forest resources in Chittagong Hill Tracts. The environment courts formed during the AL regime are now inactive, he added.

AL presidium member and former water resources minister Abdur Razzak, Obaidul Kader, Dhaka University teacher Dr Hossain Mansur, Shaheen Monowara Haque, Ainal Haque Mintu and Sujit Ray Nandi were also present at the press conference.