Everyone knows tobacco is injurious to public health by way of smoking cigarettes and taking tobacco leaf and powder with battle nuts. Moreover, the worst injuries may afflict young students and even the people in the greater locality by spreading tobacco dust mixed in the air that may affect people through inhalation. A tobacco-crushing factory closer to a primary school is a clear violation of environmental law and also a crime but our local environmental officials allowed it to come into being. Members of the school committee and leaders of the Upazila and Union councils had either kept silent or were not able to put effective resistance to the mill so close to the school. How such a tobacco factory could make way on the roadside and closer to the school is a big question. Local health officials can’t deny they are not aware of the impact of tobacco dusts. They have failed to stop it from being set up.
As media report on Wednesday said the owner of the factory — a wealthy man in the locality set up the factory with support of some powerful ruling party men. The owner secured trade license from the local Union Parishad to set up a rice mill and then instead assemble a tobacco crushing plant. He has cheated while local officials kept mum. The owner is moreover hiring children and women for tobacco processing. He is in fact running the mill illegally while threatening local activists not to raise voice against it. We must say the local administration must end its silence and shut the factory immediately before it is too late.
In our view the Nilphamari district administration and local environment officials should take the issue immediately as a big threat to public health and seal the factory. In fact tobacco crushing must stop and steps should be taken to switch land to farming other cash crop so that such economic activities slowly cease to exist.
