Multiple cracks have developed in the Khulna town protection embankment along the Bhairab and Rupsha rivers, posing a treat to business establishments, homesteads, industries including Khulna shipyard, city’s biggest kitchen market, Khulna district jail and Khulna General Hospital.
The nearly eight kilometre embankment goes under water because of constant erosion by the two rivers during downpour and tidal surges.
Massive erosion by the rivers has already rendered hundreds of people homeless, who are now living in a miserable condition in makeshift houses in different parts of the city, said businessman Shyamal Kumar Halder of Kalibari road under Sadar thana.
‘My house is also under threat of collapse as it is very close to the dilapidated embankment,’ he said.
Fish seller Khokan Nikari said he moved his homestead from Rupsha strand road last year to a safer place.
‘My house is situated in an outlying area which always get flooded after rise in water levels as town protection embankment fails to check flooding.’
Anowara Khatun, wife of rickshaw-puller Hares Ali of Bhairab strand road, said she had been living in a slum in the central part of the city for the last six months after tidal surges damaged their thatched house near the embankment.
Constructed in 2000 under ‘Secondary Town Integrated Flood Protection’ project at a cost of Tk 65.29 crore with financial assistance of Asian Development Bank, the embankment has many cracks for lack of proper maintenance by the authorities concerned.
Official sources said the Khulna divisional office of the Water Development Board submitted a project worth Tk 22.19 crore in November of 2011 to its head office in Dhaka for renovation of the embankment.
But the file relating to the project is still gathering dust at the WDB head office in Dhaka without any positive move for allocation of fund sought for this purpose, said superintending engineer Md Abul Kalam Azad.
He urged the authorities concerned to allocate necessary fund needed to renovate the embankment immediately evicting encroachers.
-With New Age input
