Md. Ramzan Hossain (Naogaon):
Tilakpur Union of Naogaon Sadar Upazila in Dakahar village is not safe from the violence of soil traders besides about 800 students of two schools, even crop land. In the last 2-1 years in the village of Dakahar, there were green fields of crop land, but now these crop lands have disappeared and turned into deep pits. On the other hand, three-crop fertile farmland is turning into fallow land. Day by day crop production is decreasing, farmers are unemployed, environment is getting polluted. A class of influential circles are openly cutting the soil of these crop lands.
Apart from this, the rural regional roads built at the cost of crores of rupees are severely damaged by the use of heavy trucks and vehicles for soil transportation. After a year, the new road is turning into a broken road.
There are allegations that soil traders, brick kiln owners are running this activity by managing everything. Meanwhile, the upazila administration sometimes prevents soil extraction, so the soil traders are often digging the soil after the evening without cutting the soil during the day.
According to local sources, many people rent three-crop land in Tilakpur union's Dakahar village, cut the soil with spades all day, then overload the truck and leave the back of the truck open by the young unskilled truck driver. As this is causing damage to the road as well as due to the soil lying on the road, a little rain can turn into mud and cause public suffering. Even the 800 teachers and students of Nagar Kusumbi Multipurpose High School and Nagar Kusumbi Government Primary School are not safe from the clutches of soil traders. Everyone is suffering due to regular digging of soil in the land adjacent to these two schools for the past three months. Sometimes during the day and sometimes during the night, they are digging the soil.
Several teachers of the two schools, who did not want to reveal their names, said that the soil syndicate traders led by Mannan of this village forced ordinary farmers to take soil from the land. For the last three months, the school children and we teachers have been facing this problem, due to dust, the school dress is clean. It gets dirty, I can't take classes properly due to the sound of the truck, due to the dust, many people are suffering from allergies and colds, everyone can suffer from allergies, even if I complained to the administration about this before, nothing was done.
Naogaon Sadar Upazila Land Assistant Officer Shaukat Mehedi Hasan said,
We have conducted numerous raids this year after receiving complaints of soil erosion. In addition to fines, we have also jailed several non-payers under the Soil Act since last January to stop cutting soil.
Nagar Kusumbi two school teachers and students, we will see the problem and take necessary measures.
