MIRZAPUR — Earth traders have been carving up hill mounds in Tangail’s Mirzapur upazila and selling the red soil in a months-long spree, residents said. The hill destruction is threatening the natural environment while wiping out biodiversity, fruit-bearing trees and forest cover, they said. Residents of the hilly area complain that despite the trade running for a month, the administration has not taken firm action. Dump trucks carrying the red soil are also damaging village roads.
Mirzapur upazila is made up of 14 unions and one municipality. Of these, the unions of Ajgana, Bashtail, Tarafpur, Latifpur and Gorai are surrounded by hills. The vast forest cover of these unions once contained hundreds of tall mounds. Tigers and various other animals and birds once lived in the forests of the hill-surrounded unions. The forest area was also filled with sal and gajari trees and many varieties of fruit and medicinal plants.
Each year, earth traders illegally cut the hill mounds and sell the soil to brick kilns and other sites for millions of taka. Like every year, the spree of cutting mounds and selling soil has not stopped. As mounds are cut and soil is sold each year, their number is declining day by day. A visit to Tarafpur union showed that within a month, at least 10 large mounds in this area had been cut and the soil sold. At Rakherchala in the union, the soil from several large mounds had been cut with backhoes and sold. Preparations were under way to cut another large mound. Workers were chopping down all the acacia, jackfruit and mango trees on top of the mound.
Hazrat Ali, Masum and Shahid of Tarafpur village said a man named Rokon from the Bashtail area was accused of cutting and removing the soil. In Radharchala in Takia Kadma village, two mounds had been cut by the same group of illegal red-soil traders. Several people, who did not want to be named, said that a soil trader named Shahidul from the Bashtail area was accused of cutting and removing the soil from those mounds.
Residents complained that the constant traffic of large dump trucks carrying the red soil was damaging village roads. The soil traders are influential, so no one dares speak out, they said. Contacted, soil trader Rokon said he had quit the soil business and that others were doing it now.
Aziz Reza, chairman of Tarafpur Union Parishad, said he was not aware of the hill cutting.
Suraiya Yasmin, the Mirzapur upazila executive officer, told local journalists that drives had been conducted several times to stop hill cutting and that fines and legal action were being taken. “We have conducted drives even at night. But they are using various tactics. However, our drives will not stop,” she said.
বাংলায় মূল প্রতিবেদন পড়ুন · Read the original Bengali report