Drive to curb pollution in Dhaka from Wednesday

The Ministry of Environment, Forest and Climate Change will conduct a month-long mobile court drive from Wednesday in Dhaka, aiming to strengthen the environmental conservation campaign, including control of air and noise pollution.

Some 25 executive magistrates with special power will conduct the drives during the period, according to a media release signed by Dipankar Bar, public relations officer at the ministry.

As drives by only three magistrates of the Department of Environment (DoE) have been barred and parallelly level of pollution increasing, the Ministry of Public Administration has recently assigned the powers of executive magistrates to the officials of various ministries and departments and attached them to the Ministry of Environment, Forest and Climate Change to escalate the drives.

This information was revealed at the orientation meeting held at the ministry Tuesday about the operation of Mobile Court of Executive Magistrates as per the Bangladesh Environmental Protection Act, 1995.

With the ministry’s Secretary Dr Farhina Ahmed in the chair, Additional Secretary (Environment) Sanjay Kumar Bhowmik, Additional Secretary (Environmental Pollution Control) Md Mizanur Rahman, Director General of DoE Dr Abdul Hamid and Joint Secretary of Environment Pollution Control Wing Shamima Begum among others were present at the meeting.

Apart from the executive magistrates who were empowered, representatives of Dhaka district administration and various related ministries and departments were also present.

Secretary Farhina Ahmed said protecting the environment is now everyone's constitutional responsibility and it is one of the 10 special initiatives taken by the prime minister.

The country loses productive capacity equivalent to about 2 per cent of GDP due to excess pollution and health hazards. Therefore, pollution must be controlled to create a smart Bangladesh and a knowledge-based society and to give the people a clean and liveable environment, he said.

The secretary directed the Executive Magistrates to conduct the Mobile Court with complete professionalism, rising above all emotions and prejudices.

Urging all to be environmentally sensitive in personal life, he said awareness activities should be implemented along with the mobile court.

The DoE DG said they will provide necessary support to the concerned executive magistrates for conducting the mobile court.