Poribesh Bachao Andalan (POBA), in association with 19 organisations under a banner of Green Forum, formed a human chain  in front of Jatiya Press Club yesterday to protest against the government's decision to cut down trees along Jessore Road. As many as 2,300 trees, most of them over hundred years old, are facing the axe as the government has decided to chop them off to widen the road. Green activists and several social welfare organisations said the government must change its decision within seven days. Otherwise, they would launch tougher programmes, they added.

Recently, the Indian authorities did not allow West Bengal road-builders to cut the century-old trees lining up on both sides of Jessore Road (from Benapole to Kolkata). They said the road could be widened by keeping the trees in the middle of the road.

On January 6, the government, at a meeting at the Jessore deputy commissioner’s office, decided to chop off the trees on the Jessore-Benapole road to widen the road.

Green activists asked the authorities concerned to amend the development project proposal by cancelling the tender on the road project.

The roads and highways department has undertaken two road-widening projects worth Tk. 650.49 crore. In the first project, a 38-km-long Jessore-Khulna-Benapole road will be constructed for Tk. 321.56 crore, while the second project will deal with constructing a 38.2-km-long Jessore-Benapole road for Tk. 328.93 crore. “A total of 4,867 trees need to be axed to

construct the roads. Of them, 2,555 trees are on the Jessore-Khulna stretch and 2,312 on the Jessore-Benapole stretch,” Abdus Sobhan, former additional director general of the Department of Environment (DoE), said at the rally.

Sobhan, who is also general secretary of POBA, said that more than 200 trees along the Jessore road are 170 years old.

Speakers at the rally demanded that the government change its decision for the sake of the environment and heritage. Modern club president Abul Hasanat, writer Pavel Partha, POBA secretary Ferdous Ahmed, State University’s architecture department head Sajjadur Rashid, plant exchange and care advisor Shamima Zahan Tuli, Subandhan Samaj Kallyan Association president Habibur Rahman Habib, BCHRD executive director Mahbubul Haque and Nangor president Sumon Shams, among others, spoke on the occasion.

The speakers also said that the government must take steps to preserve the trees while widening the Jessore road.