Human chain formed on the riverbank to protect Kamalnagar

Staff Correspondent:
Locals have formed a human chain demanding the construction of a dam on the banks of the river to protect Kamalnagar Upazila of Lakshmipur from the continued catastrophic erosion of the Meghna. On Wednesday (April 24) morning, an organization named 'Kamalnagar-Ramgati Bachao Mancha' organized a human chain on the banks of the river in Matabbarhat area of Kamalnagar Upazila. Thousands of local people, including various organizations and men and women, participated in it.
The speakers at the human chain said that if the dam work is not started immediately, Kamalnagar Upazila will disappear from the map of Bangladesh within a few years. Therefore, they sought the intervention of the Honorable Prime Minister to start the work of the river dam to protect the three and a half lakh people of this upazila.

During this time, among others, the convener of Kamalnagar-Ramgati Bachao Mancha, Advocate Abdus Sattar Palwan, former chairman of Kamalnagar Upazila Parishad Syed Md. Shamsul Alam, Laxmipur District Awami League's Agriculture Affairs Secretary Abdul Matlab, BSD leader Ibrahim Khalil and many others spoke, raising the demand to save the upazila from the terrible erosion of the Meghna River.
Locally, the project to build a 37-km dam to protect Kamalnagar-Ramgati was approved in 2014. The second phase of the project was supposed to begin after the completion of four and a half kilometers in Ramgati and one kilometer in Kamalnagar upazila in the first phase. But in March this year, local MP Major General Abdul Mannan, at a meeting organized at Hazirhat Coastal College and Matbarhat in Kamalnagar, quoted the Ministry of Water Resources as saying that the previous project to protect Ramgati-Kamalnagar from erosion of the Meghna was canceled on April 4, 2018.
Locals also said that in the wake of such information, there has been fear among the locals about the current project. Therefore, the locals have organized this human chain as part of an effort to reach their demands to the head of government in various ways, the locals said.