Stop hill cutting to save decaying environment

Violating environmental laws, influential individuals are cutting hills in Moulvibazar’s Barlekha upazila. Law enforcers come to stop them but leave after making underhanded deals with the perpetrators. Perpetrators and law enforcers in many cases joined together to make profit by violating the environment. Rights activists are helpless to see the decaying environment.
According to the Environment Conservation (Amendment) Act 2010, hill cutting is a cognisable offense; no government, semi-government or autonomous organisation is allowed to cut or raze hills without permission from the authorities concerned. Authorities sometimes conduct raids and sentence people to jail or slap fines. Many perpetrators receive news of such raids and stop their activities for a few days. Then they return to their usual business. Public demonstrations of law enforcement cannot really stop hill cutting. Some of the workers said they know about the prohibition. Every day, workers lift sand, and hill cutting mostly goes on in the morning. After the evening, vehicles move the soil. The government reiterated that they have a zero-tolerance policy for hill cutting.
Hills and hillocks in other hilly districts are also being ravaged to make way for housing projects, setting up institutions, and many commercial purposes. Each year, landslides kill many people in hilly areas but the greediness of people denies man-made danger. We fear the mindlessness of the government and ruling party men in destroying the natural topography in the hill tracts would bring more and more danger in the coming days.
With powerful people from all levels as beneficiaries, everybody turned a blind eye to the destruction of hills. DoE and other law enforcement agencies are not sincere in stopping the menace of hill cutting. Over the years, many hills have been destroyed in the hill town for housing projects. If this continues, the remaining hills would vanish soon, making a permanent geographical change in the area.