The High Court observed that corruption and willful negligence of the government officials have encouraged the mushrooming of illegal brick kilns, the prime air polluter in the city. The observation came on Sunday while hearing a public interest litigation writ petition of Human Rights and Peace for Bangladesh.
We acknowledge that some human rights bodies are serious and seek help of the highest court for directions as a last resort. But there are many such bodies to whom it is a matter of good publicity to obtain directions from their Lordships without trying other avenues available for securing remedies.
Every aspect of the government is a matter of public interest. But the court has its limitation and as lawyers we must remain conscious of it for protect the court’s position.
If High Court Division’s interference is necessary for officials to be responsible and corruption free then the important question that should be asked by the human rights bodies is what the ministers and prime minister are doing. Their Lordships are not above the government with supervisory power to oversee the administration of the government.
We do not have the rule of law to hope and believe that the judiciary to be in so strong a position that it can by itself ensure good governance. Human rights bodies do not play any role to establish the rule of law or independence of the judiciary.
According to the information supplied by the government, the Department of Environment has so far shut down 256 illegal kilns, fined kilns Tk 7 crore and sealed off six tire-burning factories in the years for not complying with the rules. However, Dhaka still remains top in the world’s unliveable city index for extreme air pollution.
On January 13, the HC issued nine directives to the government to protect the capital’s air from pollution, including shutting down brick kilns in and around the capital in two months, and banning all black-fume emitting life expired vehicles.
Even after such directions from their Lordships, Dhaka ranked top in the real-time Air Quality Index (AQI) data that ranks cities according to the hazardous quality of their air. Pakistan’s Lahore and India’s Delhi occupied the second and third spots in the list of cities with worst air quality with AQI scores of 308 and 282 respectively.
The AQI index informs people how clean or polluted the air of a certain city is, and what associated health effects might be a concern for them.
The AQI index informs people how clean or polluted the air of a certain city is, and what associated health effects might be a concern for them.
Thus, the situation is clear that the directives from the court cannot improve the performance of the government officials.
Serious crimes like murders, deaths for unsafe roads and rapes have become a daily affair and the government proves itself most inefficient to deal with the criminal activities. The people are helpless before the government.
Our problem is much deeper and broader than the effectiveness of the judicial process. The anxiety of their Lordships alone is not enough.
So the court must not encourage easy going human rights bodies who rush to the court for a quick solution. We, as public interest conscious persons, must do what we should do rightly if we can, to hold responsible the prime minister and her chosen ministers for failures of the government.
In the absence of accountability the government, the officials and ministers are becoming habitually negligent in performing their duties. When we have ministers claiming to be elected by the people, they must know how to make the government officials perform responsibly and honestly.
What we further notice is that for everything the prime minister issues orders. Thus it is clear that nothing happens or not happens without prime minister’s wish. Thus, admittedly, the government is a one-person government. One-person government cannot be run collectively for efficiency of the government.
The human rights bodies should show awareness about the hard reality of governance and the rule of law and demonstrate their strength where their strength is needed.
