Water crisis turns dream into nightmare

Men, women and children queue up for water next to the Gopalganj municipality water truck

Gopalganj water crisis

The scene is extremely unusual in rural Bangladesh. About four kilometers from Gopalganj town on the main road towards Bagherhat, dozens of women and children with pitchers in hand patiently waited by the road to fill their pitchers with potable water from the truck-mounted tanker provided by the Gopalganj Municipality.
The women said about 161 families were recently moved into the village of Mandartala under a scheme called Housing Project for Poor Urban Families. The project is also publicized as “My Dream Address”. The word “Urban” is associated here because the area is under the jurisdiction of a municipality or Pourashava, which tends to urbanization despite its rural character.
At least five international bodies, including UNDP are implementing the rehabilitation program with the local government, providing small housing units to each of the homeless poor.

The ‘Housing Project for Poor Urban Families’ scheme advertised near Mandartala, Gopalganj.

“Since we moved in here we are suffering from acute shortage of potable water,” said one Rina Rani angrily, “the tubewell water stinks and it is dangerous for our children.” She placed the heavy pitcher on her left waist and carried another small one with her right hand and walked towards her home 150 meters away.
The project envisages building 261 housing units but so far only 160 units have been completed.
Zakaria Alam, the Water Superintendent of Gopalganj, whose job is to keep the water supply of the district town running, says the tubewell water at Mandartala is contaminated with arsenic, iron and salinity and therefore is unsafe.
Nearly 6,276 subscribers (thousands of households) in Gopalganj municipality are supplied with purified surface water from the river Modhumoti. But the situation becomes very precarious when salinity creeps into the river.
“This (salinity) happens between April and May every year and lasts for two months of the year,” Alam says. “This is when our water purification plant fails and an acute water crisis grips the area,” he adds.

Pitchers of different shapes and sizes being filled up with potable water

For the rehabilitated poor of the Mandartala there is no solution in sight until another project of a pipeline from Gopalganj town is cooked up.
Local sources said many families who benefited from the scheme have refused to live there. Most of these families were living earlier in Gopalganj town on public land before being evicted and rehabilitated.
Liakot Hossain oversees the Gopalganj project as UNDP’s Town Manager. He says the problem is temporary. “They have a sweet water pond for washing in the village and I think soon a project will be taken up for installation of a pipeline from Gopalganj town,” he says. “But the biggest problem remains with the salinity creeping up in the rivers,” he added.
The salinity level in the rivers around Gopalganj at the worst time of the year could be as high as 2,000 PPM. The tolerable level for humans is around 650 ppm.
Photos and Report by: Morshed Ali Khan

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Posted by Reportsbd on May 31 2015. Filed under Home Slide, National. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0. You can leave a response or trackback to this entry