We highly appreciate the government’s move to formulate a fresh law styled ‘National River Protection Commission Act’ in order to protect the country’s rivers and waters bodies from grabbing and pollution.
The proposed law will be placed in the Parliament after completion of necessary proceedings, says a story headlined ‘Each div to have river court’ published in this daily on Sunday. Reportedly, after enactment of the proposed law, each division will have one or more special courts called ‘River Conservation Tribunal’, which will be linked to the National River Conservation Commission (NRCC).
The proposed law will cover all the rivers, reservoirs, haors, wetlands, canals, seashores, fountains, lakes and all water sources of Bangladesh and bring them under the NRCC. And this fresh law will replace the current one called ‘National River Conservation Commission Act 2013’ which was formulated in 2013.
The fresh river law will play an important role in freeing
the rivers, canals and water bodies from grabbers
The country has some 405 rivers and 57 trans-boundary rivers flowing inside Bangladesh. Around 77 rivers have totally disappeared from the map of Bangladesh. Currently the length of internal river routes of the country is 6,000 kilometres during the monsoon and 4,000 kilometres in the dry season. About 1,620 km of river routes have totally disappeared and the farmers are now cultivating crops on these lands.
Two years back, the NRCC had identified over 45148 powerful individuals, businesses establishments and institutions as river grabbers across the country. The city corporations, district administrations and the Bangladesh Inland Transport Authority jointly conducted eviction drives several times against illegal structures built occupying rivers banks across the country. But our rivers and other water bodies still remain grabbed by several groups of influential vested quarters.
Our agriculture and rural economy are dependent on rivers, canals, haors and other water bodies. We hope the fresh river law will play an important role in freeing the rivers, canals and water bodies from grabbers
