Unforgivable industrial callousness continues
Saturday, 7 November 2009
A spinning and dyeing mill, commissioned in 2006 in Sonargaon municipal area under Narayanganj, has reportedly been discharging untreated effluent into the Menikhali river via a link canal, with serious consequences for some thirty five thousand residents in the neighbourhood. One would have thought the government's relevant ministry, and others with oversight, would have subjected at least new mills and factories to the minimum of environmental standards. Clearly, that is not the case though there is no dearth of seminars and symposiums designed to educate everyone about what development ought to leave behind --- wealth and well being, not destruction and disease.
The industrial unit under focus now is said to have poisoned the water bodies to such an extent that floating dead fish is a common sight, hundreds of hectares of crops are badly being affected and even the tin roofs of the houses in the vicinity are getting eaten away by the corrosive chemicals in the air. Death of animals has also been reported, from drinking the poisoned water, not to mention the stink, and the skin and respiratory diseases. The unit had been condemned and sealed during the last caretaker government for the same irresponsibility. But with the change of government it has gone back to business as usual, and peoples' complaints seem to be falling on deaf ears. If the callousness of one official of the factory is any indication of the general attitude of fledgling industrialists in the country, then Bangladesh would have much to rue. He was quoted as saying that people do have to face 'a little inconvenience' if a factory is to function! This is the typical response of a myopic, ecologically unenlightened entrepreneur that Bangladesh should do without.
Civil society groups, that are sufficiently eco-literate, need to exert pressure on the government, as well as on the old and up-coming industrial enterprises, to develop and install proper technologies for treating and recycling harmful waste products, sooner rather than later. How life-destroying untreated waste dumping can be has been well illustrated by New York's Love Canal tragedy. An abandoned trench in a residential area, which was used as a dumpsite for toxic chemical waste for years together, eventually poisoned surrounding water bodies, seeped into people's backyards and generated toxic fumes, causing high rates of birth defects, liver and kidney damage, respiratory ailments and various forms of cancer. It was due to the dogged activism of the affected people and the investigative reports of one determined environmental journalist, that an emergency was finally declared in the Love Canal area, and the residents had to be eventually evacuated. The incident had led to a clean-up campaign all across the United States but the scale of damage done by indiscriminate waste disposal for so long hardly made it easy. The US Environment Protection Agency estimated in 1979 that there were more than 50,000 known sites where toxic wastes were stored or buried, and less than seven per cent received proper disposal ! Among them were high level nuclear and chemical wastes.
Bangladesh is bound to grow industrially, but industrialisation must not be allowed to kill the goose that lays the golden egg. In such a population-dense, agriculturally-rich but materially-poor country, where the main resources are the incredibly fertile land, sweet water fish and vegetation, it should be tantamount to treason to destroy these God-given wealth through mindless plunder or the generation of poisons in the name of industrial development. Ecological education in the real since of the term, not just attending high profile events and generating sound bites for the media, is a must for all decision makers.
The industrial unit under focus now is said to have poisoned the water bodies to such an extent that floating dead fish is a common sight, hundreds of hectares of crops are badly being affected and even the tin roofs of the houses in the vicinity are getting eaten away by the corrosive chemicals in the air. Death of animals has also been reported, from drinking the poisoned water, not to mention the stink, and the skin and respiratory diseases. The unit had been condemned and sealed during the last caretaker government for the same irresponsibility. But with the change of government it has gone back to business as usual, and peoples' complaints seem to be falling on deaf ears. If the callousness of one official of the factory is any indication of the general attitude of fledgling industrialists in the country, then Bangladesh would have much to rue. He was quoted as saying that people do have to face 'a little inconvenience' if a factory is to function! This is the typical response of a myopic, ecologically unenlightened entrepreneur that Bangladesh should do without.
Civil society groups, that are sufficiently eco-literate, need to exert pressure on the government, as well as on the old and up-coming industrial enterprises, to develop and install proper technologies for treating and recycling harmful waste products, sooner rather than later. How life-destroying untreated waste dumping can be has been well illustrated by New York's Love Canal tragedy. An abandoned trench in a residential area, which was used as a dumpsite for toxic chemical waste for years together, eventually poisoned surrounding water bodies, seeped into people's backyards and generated toxic fumes, causing high rates of birth defects, liver and kidney damage, respiratory ailments and various forms of cancer. It was due to the dogged activism of the affected people and the investigative reports of one determined environmental journalist, that an emergency was finally declared in the Love Canal area, and the residents had to be eventually evacuated. The incident had led to a clean-up campaign all across the United States but the scale of damage done by indiscriminate waste disposal for so long hardly made it easy. The US Environment Protection Agency estimated in 1979 that there were more than 50,000 known sites where toxic wastes were stored or buried, and less than seven per cent received proper disposal ! Among them were high level nuclear and chemical wastes.
Bangladesh is bound to grow industrially, but industrialisation must not be allowed to kill the goose that lays the golden egg. In such a population-dense, agriculturally-rich but materially-poor country, where the main resources are the incredibly fertile land, sweet water fish and vegetation, it should be tantamount to treason to destroy these God-given wealth through mindless plunder or the generation of poisons in the name of industrial development. Ecological education in the real since of the term, not just attending high profile events and generating sound bites for the media, is a must for all decision makers.