Tree felling in Barisal triggers protests
Authorities of Jamuna Oil Depot on Wednesday felled down 40 trees on the Kirtonkhola River in Barisal to construct an oil storage tank, ignoring environment activists' urge to save the trees that had been planted for riverbank protection. Photo: STAR
A state owned oil company on Wednesday felled at least 40 trees to construct a huge storage tank at its local depot on the bank of Kirtankhola River, triggering protests by environment activists. The trees were planted on 4.75 acres of land for social forestation and riverbank protection. Government allotted the land on the riverbank 20 years ago for the depot terming the area as 'restricted' to general public. It now has two oil storage tanks with total capacity of 35 lakh litres, said an official. The authorities recently decided to build a huge reserve tank with a capacity of 85.2 lakh litres as the daily demand went up in the area. Considering the issue, they chopped down the trees, said depot manager of Jamuna Oil Company Sayed Hasan. He claimed that the trees were felled down after taking verbal permission from forest department as those had no log value. Besides, the trees adjacent to the oil tanks could cause fire accidents any time, he added. Terming the activities illegal, Barisal divisional forest officer Sayedur Rahman said, no verbal or written permission was taken from them in this regard. Meanwhile, environment activists protested the move of the oil company and said installing such an oil tank on the riverbank will endanger environment. They also said any accident in the depot will not only destroy huge properties and lives, but also the spilling of huge quantity of oil into riverwater will permanently damage aqua-life and biodiversity in the area. “As the area was restricted, we could not prevent the oil company from felling down the trees except for lodging our verbal protest over phone”, said environmentalist M Shahzada, executive director of Prantajon. Kafiluddin, deputy director at the department of environment (DoE) in the divisional office, said felling trees and constructing oil storage tank on the river bank without permission of DoE is illegal.
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