No more roads to be built in haor areas : Minister

DU Correspondent :
No more new roads will be built in haor areas in the interest of the free flow of water and maintaining the natural environment of haor and rivers areas. If necessary, flyover will be constructed to improve the road communication there.
Planning Minister MA Mannan said this as a chief guest at an annual conference of environment movement of the country organized by Bangladesh Poribesh Andolon (BAPA) and Bangladesh Environment Network (BEN).
The Planning minister mentioned that no more a single road will be built in haor areas. He said “The government is building a flyover keeping in mind the topography and environment there. Another flyover will also be constructed.”
Mentioning that the government will not do any development project by destroying the environment, he said, “We believe in sustainable development, which will be done by protecting the environment.”
This year, the annual environment conference was held at Dhaka University (DU)’s Kazi Motahar Hossain Building auditorium with the theme of ‘Bangladesh Hoar, Rivers and Bills: Problems and Remedies’.
The speakers of the conference said that due to unplanned construction of infrastructure, the problem of flooding and inundation is increasing day by day and thereby public suffering. Therefore, the environment and nature of rivers and reservoirs and haors should be kept in mind while making development projects.
Professor Md. Khalekuzzaman, Member Secretary of the conference preparation committee, presented the main article in this event.
“Before the construction of the hoar road, we had researched and shown that at least 30 percent of the area of the road should be kept empty by constructing culverts and bridges.
Otherwise, if it starts raining upstream, the water will get stuck on that road and the flooding will be prolonged and intense,” Khalekuzzaman said.
“But when the hoar road was constructed, it was found that only two and a half percent of the streets were kept vacant,” he added.
Mujibur Rahman Howlader, Former Chairman of the National River Protection Commission, said that the list of the river’s occupants has been published. Now our responsibility is to evict the occupants according to that list so that the rivers can run in their natural flow.
BAPA General Secretary Sharif Jamil, BEN Founder and BAPA Vice-president Professor S Nazrul Islam, and among others delivered their speeches on this event.