Illegal construction of hotels, resorts, and cottages continued in St. Martin Island despite the prohibition
St. Martin’s is a small island located in the northeastern section of the Bay of Bengal, approximately 9 kilometers south of the tip of the Cox’s Bazar-Teknaf peninsula and creating Bangladesh’s southernmost region.
The government declared Saint Martin’s Island an Ecologically Critical Area in 1989. Constructing permanent buildings and facilities is wholly banned here.
Moreover, on January 4, 2022, the government of Bangladesh declared an area of 1,743 sq km around St. Martin’s Island as a Marine Protected Area (MPA). Even after the announcement, infrastructures, such as resorts and cottages, have continued in various island parts.
The Department of the Environment (DOE), Bangladesh, campaigned for the past two years to restrict the flow of tourists in St. Martin by issuing a public notice containing 14-point guidelines for protecting the environment. But it is not followed. The picture is instead the opposite.
More than 190 hotels, Resorts, and Vacation homes have already sprouted up despite the restriction imposed by the DOE. Construction is underway on more than 30 different types of accommodations.
None of these hotels, resorts, and cottages have environmental clearance and no waste management schemes. Hotel wastes are mixing into the seawater through the drains. Most installations make by lifting large boulders from the beach’s sand.
In the central part of the island, in the Galachipa area, work is underway to build a resort called ‘Sand Coastal Beach’ with a tin fence on the adjacent farmland on the south side of the Department of Environment’s Marine Park office.
More than 30 workers are working to build more than one cottage there. Next to it, a two-story paved tower was seen under construction. With the condition of anonymity, an employee in charge of supervising the work admitted that there were no documents against the resort’s construction.
It had known that the resort is under construction by ‘managing’ the Department of Environment.The construction of the resort will cost crores of taka.
The construction of The ‘Dipannita Telemedicine and Resort Center’ and the ‘Gadhuli Eco Resort’ are inside a tin fenced land on the north side of Marine Park. These two organizations do not have any valid documents. The construction of these infrastructures is going on by bringing brick-cement-sand from Teknaf by loading trawlers.
In response, Md Mamunur Rashid, the district’s Deputy Commissioner, said that the Atoll needs to keep alive at any cost. They run a mobile court through an executive magistrate to evict illegal establishments and stop unlawful activities.
Md. Azharul Islam, the Assistant Director of the DOE (St. Martin’s Island), said, “Due to the workforce crisis, proper monitoring is not going on. Though Mobile courts impose fines and lawsuits, the illegal construction is not stopping. The workforce in their office is only six.”
A three-story building called ‘Dreamers Paradise Resort’ has illegally constructed on the island’s north beach. A mobile court conducted the operation on January 27, 2022.
At that time, casting the three-story roof of the building was going on. Mobile court magistrate Nawrin Haque fined the owner 0.1 million for illegally constructing the building.
Abdur Rashid, a businessman from the Tejgaon region of the capital, owns the building. Atlantic Resort and Prince Haven Resort owners were each fined 0.1 million dollars. There was also a BD.T50, 000 fine handed down to the proprietor of Friends Resort.
Magistrate Nawrin Haque informed that she had identified 17 more illegal installations in different parts of the island; those will evict soon.
