Ain o Salish Kendra (ASK), Communist Party of Bangladesh and Bangladesher Samajtantrik Dal yesterday slammed government plans to take back land leased out to tea estates in Habiganj and establish a special economic zone. About 16,000 tea workers are dependent on the land of the three tea gardens, cultivating rice to supplement their meagre incomes. Although the government owns the land, the workers have been living there for generations, observed the rights organisation and two parties in two statements. Besides it is the tea workers who transformed the barren and treacherous region into livable and fertile lands through hundreds of years of toil, they said. Citing newspaper reports, ASK said the government was making arrangements to take back 511 acres from tea manufacturer Duncan Brothers Bangladesh Ltd. Although any development scheme by the government should take into account the opinion of locals, the tea workers were not consulted, added the statements. ASK demanded that the government consider how the people affected by the economic zone can be rehabilitated. Expressing solidarity with the tea workers, the two leftist parties urged all to wage a tough movement to force the government to abandon its plan.
