The government has taken initiatives to set up hand-run deep tubewells and water production deep tubewells in some arsenic contaminated rock-earth areas of the country to ensure supply of safe water in some selected areas of 10 districts. The Executive Committee of the National Economic Council (ECNEC) has recently approved a project to this end, titled ‘Ground Water Investigation and Development of Deep Ground Water Source in Urban and Rural Areas in Bangladesh’ at a cost of Tk 103.53crore.
Of the total project cost, TK 33.14 crore will come from the national exchequer while the rest of Tk 70.39crore from Japan International Cooperation Agency (JICA) as grant.
Talking to the news agency, a Planning Ministry official said that Department of Public Health and Engineering (DPHE) under the Ministry of LGRD will implement the project to be completed by June, 2019.
The project area covers 10 districts of three divisions namely Faridpur, Manikganj, Rajbari, Chuadanga, Jessore, Jhenidah, Kushtia, Meherpur, Chapainawabganj and Pabna.
The ministry official said that the project areas have been selected considering the level of rock-earth, rate of arsenic contamination, number of arsenic affected people and coverage of water distribution.
Another official at the DPHE informed that the main project activities include procurement of two rigs and set up water production tube wells and hand-run tubewells by digging hard-rock earth through these rigs. Under the project, some 35 hand-run deep tubewells will be set up in 35 rural areas of 10 districts while 25 production tubewells in nine pourashavas in nine districts.
The project has been undertaken following the feasibility study report conducted jointly by JICA and Earth System Science Co Ltd (Japan). The project will also enhance the capacity of the staffs of DPHE in deep tube well digging technology.
The use of tubewells for ensuring safe water started gaining popularity in Bangladesh from 1970 while the water supply coverage through setting up tubewells on priority basis stood up to 90 per cent till 1990.
But, this progress suffered a setback following the detection of presence of arsenic in tubewell water in 1993 in the country as the DPHE and the British Geological Survey in a joint survey found the presence of arsenic in most of the areas of Bangladesh. The DPHE official said that the effectiveness of deep tube wells is around 95 percent compared to 58.9 percent in other methods of technologies while there is a need for conducting regular maintenance in other methods of projects which often becomes tougher. For this, deep tubewell has been defined as a safe source of water in the national policy (2009-2011) related to poverty alleviation programme.
Under the circumstances, there is a need for setting up deep tube wells where the shallow level of water is contaminated with arsenic. But, in some places of the country, there is a need for specialised equipments for setting up deep tube wells as it is not possible to dig through hardrock earth in normal procedure.
Under the project, the rigs would be used to dig through the hard rock earth for setting up deep tube wells.
The special Pre Evaluation Committee (PEC) meeting on the project was held on June 16 this year where the Planning Commission recommended for giving approval to the project as an investment one instead of primarily selected technical project.
According to Unicef, naturally-occurring arsenic contaminated water was first detected in Bangladesh in 1993. The arsenic comes from arsenic-rich material in the region’s river systems, deposited over thousands of years along with the sands and gravels which make up the land of Bangladesh. Arsenic contamination is not caused by tube wells, or by irrigation or application of fertilizers.
A total of 4.7 million tube wells in Bangladesh have been tested and 1.4 million of those were found to contain arsenic above the Government drinking water limit of 50 parts per billion (ppb)1. Combined with another 200,000 unscreened tube wells, which are estimated. The WHO Guideline value for arsenic in drinking water is set at 10 ppb. This is the drinking water standard adopted in many industrialized countries. However, many developing countries have kept the limit at 50 ppb for practical reasons.
-With The Independent input
