Bangladesh Environmental Lawyers' Association (BELA) served a legal notice yesterday asking the government to take appropriate steps for protecting the Aila victims in the southwestern areas of Khulna and Satkhira districts.
The notice stated that people in waterlogged upazilas of Dakop and Koira in Khulna, and Shyamnagar and Ashashuni in Satkhira are living in meager condition without any stable supply of food, clothing and shelter.
The cyclone surge broke most of the embankments and the water from the river is, at present, gushing out in those areas, thereby flooding the areas with saline water, the notice said.
It added that the local people are unable to return to their homes and are exposed to greater health hazards.
The notice demanded the government adopt measures to ensure repairing or construction of all local embankments in the Aila-hit areas by January 2010, ensure proper maintenance of all coastal embankments and prevention of shrimp cultivation, continue supply of food, drinking water, medicines, sanitation facilities, until embankments are repaired and provide winter clothes to the affected people.
The secretaries to the ministries of the water resources, the disaster management and relief, the local government, rural development and cooperatives, the food, the health, the environment and forest, the director general of the Bangladesh Water Development Board (BWDB) and its divisional engineers in Khulna and Satkhira have been asked to take appropriate measures for the Aila victims
BELA chief Syeda Rizwana Hasan yesterday told The Daily Star that if the respondents do not take appropriate measures for the Aila victims, her organisation would take legal actions against them.
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