Agriculture Advisor Jahangir Alam has announced that the government will introduce a Farmland Protection Act to ensure agricultural land is not diverted to other sectors.
Speaking at a cold storage handover ceremony in Singair on Wednesday, he said middlemen often reap more profits from crops than farmers, using the money to build buildings while farmers remain in shabby homes.
“The responsibility to break this syndicate falls on all of us,” he stressed. He further declared that if agricultural land is used for road construction, the Local Government Engineering Department (LGED) will be required to pay three times the compensation. Officials failing to carry out their duties properly will face departmental action, he warned.