Chittagong district administration evicts 150 families from risky hills

The Chittagong district administration has evicted 150 families from a hazardous hill site, a day after a landslip killed three children.

Senior Assistant Commissioner Afzal Hossain said the families lived in 50 houses on the foothill of Tankir Pahar under Baizid Thana.

Those families had been living there illegally on land owned by the Amin Jute Mills.

“It’s a big hill and there are several hundred houses there,” Hossain said on Monday.

“We only evicted families that were living in the most dangerous part at the base of the hill,” he told bdnews24.com.

The families were shifted from a place where three children of a family were buried under the mud when parts of the hill caved in on Saturday morning after days of incessant rain.

More than 100 people were killed in a massive landslide in Chittagong in 2007.

Since then, the local administration regularly evicts families living in the risky zones but they return once the drive slackens.

In the recent round, the district administration began the eviction drive on the second week of June but suspended it during the Ramadan.

Senior Assistant Commissioner Hossain said people living in the danger zone had various professions.

“They are not financially solvent but are not refugees either,” he said.

Hossain said some of the families had TVs and refrigerators.

“They can rent houses somewhere else but risk their lives for cheap accommodation,” he added.

The families, evicted during Monday’s daylong drive, have been temporarily relocated to the Amin Jute Mills School and Madrasa premises. 
 
The district administration is providing them food.