Sylhet Bureau :
Due to environmental considerations, it has been decided to suspend the lease of 17 out of the 51 stone quarries in the country. There is a court ban and leases cannot be granted in any stone quarry declared as an Environmentally Critical Area (ECA).
In addition, in the interest of protecting natural beauty, the lease activities in Bholaganj, Utmachara, Ratanpur, Bichanakandi and Lovachhara stone quarries of Sylhet district will be suspended.
This decision was taken at a meeting on the management of gazetted stone/silicabal/nuri stone/white clay quarries across the country on Sunday (April 27) in the meeting room of the Ministry of Power, Energy and Mineral Resources, chaired by Advisor Muhammad Fauzul Kabir Khan.
Syeda Rizwana Hasan, Advisor to the Ministry of Environment, Forests and Climate Change, and Lieutenant General (Retd.) Md. Jahangir Alam Chowdhury, Advisor to the Ministry of Home Affairs and Agriculture, were present at the meeting.
The meeting also decided that it has been made mandatory to obtain an environmental clearance from the Department of Environment before granting leases to other quarries. In the case of illegal stone extraction, the local administration has been instructed to bring the actual responsible and guilty persons, not the workers who extracted the stone, under the law. From now on, any illegally extracted stone will not be sold but will be supplied to the government’s construction work through customs.
In this context, the Environment Advisor said, ‘This is not only in the case of stone mahals, but the same policy can be followed to prevent uncontrolled sand extraction. This will protect the environment and public interest and natural resources like sand and stone can be used in the interest of the people in accordance with the law.’
The advisor said that appropriate measures will be taken to protect the country’s environment and environment from now on, overcoming the various previous limitations of the Department of Environment.
It is noteworthy that the Energy and Mineral Resources Division of the Ministry of Power, Energy and Mineral Resources suspended stone extraction from all stone quarries in the country on February 18, 2020 until further orders. Later, on January 13, 2025, when the decision to cancel this suspension was taken, the Ministry of Environment, Forests and Climate Change expressed concern. In view of this, these decisions were taken in the meeting.
