Dumping of industrial effluent is going on unabated in the river Buriganga despite cries from the environmentalists, media as well as the conscious section of people. Besides being polluted by various waste materials, the wastewater from synthetic azo dyes is greatly harming the Buriganga, which along with Shitalakhya, Turag and Balu, are called the lifeline of Dhaka and its adjacent areas. But apart from its navigation use, the Buriganga is serving no purpose to us but as a dumping canal.
According to a report of a national daily, the dyes are being dumped usually at night in the Shyampur area of Dhaka. This kind of waste is not only extremely harmfull to the environment, but some variants are even carcinogenic also. While dyes are harming the environment and affecting our life, it is sad that Bangladesh still does not have any regulations to control production and sale of the dyes.
There are hundreds of factories in and around the capital but they do not have the required Effluent Treatment Plant (ETP). As a result, the rivers are now gasping for breath. The water of these rivers has become jet black in most of the places and the presence of aquatic life in these rivers is becoming increasingly rare. The High Court intervened several times in the past and issued rules against pollution as well as encroachment, but up until now nothing substantial has been achieved in recovering the naturalness of these rivers.
That we have to protect the rivers hardly needs restatement and for this it is absolutely necessary to stop the factories that discharge their wastes without treatment. One step for this would be to ensure that from now on no new factory is allowed to start unless it meets the condition of having its own ETP. True, we need expansion of our industries but this must not be at the cost of making the environment that we live in endangered. Therefore, the factories that still do not have their own ETP can be extended loans on soft terms so that they can establish their own ETP within a stipulated time frame.
Now that the Padma Bridge has opened to traffic, the number of people using the river route will surely decrease and this will also decrease the number of water vessels in the river. Lesser pressure from people and water vessels will positively impact the river, but unless the river’s pollution by industrial wastes is checked, we cannot save our rivers as well as the environment where we live.
