Green campaign
Recently three organisations committed to environmental cause, Paribesh Bachao Andolon, Buriganga Bachao Andolon, and the Bangladesh Resource Centre for Indigenous Knowledge organised a green campaign programme at the Sadarghat launch terminal to make people aware of the crucial need of protecting the rivers in and around the capital. If a campaign like this can be sustainably organised to raise the awareness of people, it can be expected that one day they will surely respond positively and stop destroying these rivers which are vital for healthy human living in the capital city. They would stop throwing plastic bags, bottles and other waste materials into the rivers.
It is not only the effluent of factories behaviour at the individual level is also greatly responsible for bringing the rivers to their current pitiable state. Yes, people have to be persuaded to realise that these rivers belong to them and they have to do their best to protect them. Long period of neglect have turned their waters so poisonous that aquatic lives including fish have become rare in these rivers and it has become obligatory for us to give back the naturalness to these rivers.
But individual responsibility apart, the government must do its best also to save the rivers. As the government did not take the matter seriously, several times the High Court issued rule to take action in this regard in the past. But until now nothing significant could be achieved to protect these rivers. Factories are still discharging effluents rather freely and encroachers are still encroaching the rivers with hardly a conscience.
There are hundreds of such factories in and around the capital that do not have the required effluent treatment plant (ETP). As a result, the four major rivers such as Buriganga, Shitalakhya, Turag and Balu are now gasping for breath. In the past, the Department of Environment fined some of these factories but only fining them is not enough. The government can proactively help the factory owners to install ETPs that still do not have one.
In this regard, it can provide loans on easiest terms and conditions to the industries to set up ETPs. It was also heard sometime ago that the government would set up a central ETP to help the factories without an ETP. This is a good idea and paying fee to the government many factories can discharge coloured chemical and poisonous wastes
after treatment, greatly minimising the degree of pollution. It is not understandable why the government is not helping in the establishment of the ETPs by playing the role of a facilitator.
