Over a Hundred Trees Felled in the Open in Sitakunda as Railway Pleads Ignorance and Forest Office Stays Silent

Trees standing on railway and government khas land at Faujdarhat in Sitakunda, Chattogram, are being felled in the open. Although more than a hundred trees have been cut over about 20 days, the railway division claims it has no such information. A forest department official has visited the site, yet no action has followed.

Local residents allege that a syndicate is indiscriminately cutting trees and levelling hills in the open, aiming to build a container depot. The spot where the woodland is being cleared lies about half a kilometre from the Sitakunda highway.

The area sits to the north-east of Faujdarhat Jalil railway station and south of the Port Link-2 container depot, and is locally known as Jongol Bhatiary.

It is alleged that before the felling began, the syndicate threatened landless people living in the afforestation area with eviction, using the railway authority's name. Out of fear, however, local people are unwilling to say who is behind the work.

Earlier, the railway authority had tried to lease this afforestation area to a local institution. Local residents allege the move was made even though commercial leasing of railway property remains suspended.

An eviction drive against the landless residents followed last September. Faced with local resistance, the Bangladesh Railway eastern zone's eviction drive was suspended at the time, and residents were given one month to remove their structures.

Residents say more than three hundred families have lived on the railway land for over three decades. When the eviction drive came without any arrangement for alternative rehabilitation, they took to the streets with their families in sit-ins and protests. Locals believe the deforestation began essentially after that episode.

Inquiries found that trees have been cut there for about 20 days. More than a hundred trees, large and small, have already been felled. The cut trees were chopped into pieces and carried away in seven trucks. According to locals, some of the felled trees were 40 to 50 years old.

Close to the felling site stands the forest department's Faujdarhat checkpoint. Its officer in charge, Md Sajjat Hossain, said that on hearing about the cutting of the railway's government trees, he visited the site a week ago and saw piles of cut trees; he had also heard that some trees were removed. He said the land belongs to the railway and so do the trees, but he was not sure whether the trees had been handed to any party through a proper tender process.

A visit to the area showed afforestation trees cut across a wide stretch of land. Seven or eight workers were chopping stumps and branches into pieces, and there were signs that some high hillocks had been cut and levelled.

Residents say a syndicate is taking control of the government khas and railway land to build a container depot. A man named Rahman Monir, involved in the cutting, said the trees belong to the railway and government afforestation. He claimed a person bought the trees from the railway through a tender and assigned them the cutting work. Although he admitted cutting many trees, he refused to say who had engaged them.

Asked about the matter, the railway's Chattogram divisional estate officer, Md Khorshed Alam Chowdhury, said he had no information about tree cutting there and that no tender had been given for cutting trees. After that conversation he asked journalists to send him photos and videos of the cutting. The photos and videos were later sent to his WhatsApp, but he did not speak to the journalists again afterwards.

The questions therefore remain: who felled more than a hundred government trees without a tender, and why did the two responsible departments take no effective action while the work continued in the open for 20 days? Local people expect a swift investigation, a halt to the felling and action against those involved.