Where is the DoE?

A photograph published in this newspaper on Tuesday, show hundreds of maunds of wood illegally and openly being burnt every day to fuel brick kilns containing iron chimneys by the Doarika River in Barisal's Babuganj. Law enforcing agencies have, meanwhile, been turning a blind eye to the environmental damage that is being caused by such action, thus, paving the way for its continuation.

Concurrently, it is important to remember that there are hundreds of other locations around the country, if not more, where the same is happening. In a 2014 World Health Organisation report, Bangladesh was ranked fourth among 91 countries with worst urban air quality. And according to the Department of Environment (DoE), the presence of pollutant particles in the air in places like Dhaka is more than six times the healthy limit.

Not surprisingly, according to the director of the project that measured air qualities in different localities, one of the main reasons for such high presence of air pollutants was brick kilns. So the question is, where is the DoE in stopping all of this? Did it not look at the revelations of its project? Is it not aware that thousands of maunds of wood are illegally being burnt every day, even though it is there for all to see? The logical answer would be, of course it is; it is just not doing anything about it.

This must change. And the directive must come from the highest level of government, so that the DoE and other authorities shake off their deplorable attitude and perform their designated duty.