News Desk :
A total of 1,60,566 individuals and organisations have grabbed 2.57 lakh acres of forest land across the country.
Of the total forest land, 1.38 lakh acres are reserved forest area — grabbed by 88,215 persons and organisations.
Forest Department submitted the statistics containing names of grabbers of forest land all over the country today at a meeting of the parliamentary standing committee on the ministry of environment, forest and climate change.
According to the department, a total of 1.60 lakh acres of forest land were handed over to different public and private organisations including Bangladesh Forest Industries Development Corporation (BFIDC).
Emerging from the meeting at the Jatiya Sangsad Bhaban, Saber Hossain Chowdhury, an Awami League MP and chief of the parliamentary watchdog, told reporters yesterday that the committee has asked the ministry to make public the names of grabbers through its website so that people can know their identity and to make the process of preparing the grabbers’ list transparent. “This was for the first time in the country’s history that we got a complete and detailed list of grabbers of forest land as per the division — a huge document containing 5,000 pages,” he added.
After preparing the list of grabbers, the parliamentary body has asked the ministry to take immediate measures to recover the grabbed forest land soon.
