Bayezid-Faujdarhat Link Road: Expert committee recommendation on cutting hills

The Hill Management Committee of Chattogram has recommended forming an expert committee to again cut fifteen hills, through which the Bayezid-Faujdarhat Link Road was built, to make the road risk free.

Md Ashraf Uddin, Chattogram divisional commissioner and head of the committee, made the recommendation at the 23rd meeting of the committee on Sunday.

Confirming the matter, Md Ashraf Uddin told the Business Standard, "The Chattogram Development Authority (CDA) has cut the hills at a 90-degree angle on both sides of the six-kilometre -long road during construction of the road. It has caused the risk of landslides at any time. We will form an expert committee on this issue. The committee will decide on cutting the hills again to make the road risk free."

The Bayezid-bound section of the Link Road was unofficially opened for freight traffic in January last year. 

After landslides that occurred several times last monsoon on that portion of the road, the CDA, which has built the link road, closed the road. 

However, Md Ashraf said they had spoken to the environment, forest and climate change ministry about this. 

The ministry had agreed on taking measures to ensure that people did not die in accidents or landslides, he added.

On 6 February 2020, the minister of environment, forest and climate change, the director-general of the Department of Environment (DoE) and other officials of the district administration visited the site of the link road from Bayezid Bostami area of Chattogram city to Faujdarhat in Sitakunda.

At that time, the Monitoring and Enforcement Department of the DoE had found that 69,219.620 cubic feet more areas of the hills, which were not approved for cutting, had been cut.

Besides, the hills were cut at a 90-degree angle without following the instructions of the Hill Cutting Management Plan.  

That was why the CDA was fined more than Tk10.38 crore after a hearing at the head office of the environment department on 29 January last year.

In June 2016, Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina inaugurated the Link Road project at a cost of Tk172.49 crore. 

Initially, it was supposed to be a two-lane road. But, in October 2016, it was decided to upgrade the road to four-lane. This increases the cost by about Tk150 crore.