Thursday, March 28, 2024

Chitra river rots with jute

A portion of the Chitra river has become seriously polluted, as farmers are rotting jute plants in it.
The pollution that extends some 40km on both sides of the river very badly affected nearly 40,000 people of Narail sadar and Kalia upazilas of the district.
Fishes and other aquatic creatures are dying in hundreds, and their decomposed bodies are making the situation worse for the locals.
Those living by the bank cannot go near the water they were habituated to use for cooking, drinking, washing and bathing until three months ago. The water reeks of dead fish and rotten jute smells, locals said.
Other water bodies such as ponds, canals, beels and marshy lands in the area have also been filled with jute plants to rot.
Farmers rot jute in the Chitra every year. But this year the water level has gone down for lack of rain. Slow current for lack of water has created a near water stagnation situation in the river, making it hard for the polluted water to flow away.
“The Chitra water is unusable now, besides fishes and other aquatic creatures are dying for lack of oxygen,” said Borun Kumer Biswas, associate professor of biology at Narail Government Victoria College.
Farmers were trained and advised to use “ribbon method” for rotting jute, said Banik Ram Krishna, deputy director of Department of Agriculture Extension in Narail.
Rotting jute in ditches dug in yard or field using urea and small amount of water is called ribbon method. It saves rivers and other water bodies from pollution.
However, during a recent visit in the area this correspondent found that no farmers were using the method. A number of them alleged they never heard about the system.
The river pollution has also hit the local fishermen hard. Life has become difficult for them as they lost their income source.
Sukumar Malo and Subod Malo — two fishermen from Pangkovila village — said they are struggling to manage their families for the last few months.
“We cannot fish in the river as it is filled with jute plants. Our earnings have stopped,” said Narayan Roy, another fisherman from sadar upazila.

 

Courtesy of The Daily Star

Related News

Frequent cyclones hit agriculture hard in coastal Bangladesh

DAE estimates Tk 387cr worth crops loss in Midhili Emran Hossain With another cyclonic storm brewing in the Bay of Bengal, the third one in a little over a month, farmers on Bangladesh’s coast are busy harvesting their partially ripened crops, potentially losing their expected production significantly. The Department of Agricultural Extension completed its assessment ... Read more

Week-long tree fair ends

News Desk : dhakamirror.com A week-long tree fair and plantation drive, held on Moulvibazar Government High School grounds, concludes today. The fair, organised by Moulvibazar district administration and the Department of Wildlife Management and Nature Conservation, began on July 27. Students, among other visitors, got the chance to explore an array of varieties, both local ... Read more

Trees on 50 acres lost in 5yrs

Sohrab Hossain The Shuvo Sandhya Beach in Barguna’s Taltali upazila has been facing serious erosion by the Bay for the last couple of years. Due to continuous erosion by the Bay, nearly 50 acres of forestland close to the beach and about 60,000 trees have already been washed away in the last five year. Meanwhile, ... Read more

Kuakata Beach: 75,000 trees lost to erosion every year

Md Abbas There was a time when coconut, palm, tamarisk, and mangrove trees swayed with the winds on Kuakata Beach. Their tall trunks guarded the shore-dwellers against the wrath of natural calamities. However, the current state of the National Park, a government-declared forest reserve along this coastal belt since 2005, only brings dismay to tourists ... Read more

Bogura yoghurt, Chapainawabganj Langra and Ashwina receive the GI label

News Desk : dhakamirror.com Four more products, including the yogurt of Bogura, and Langra and Ashwina varieties of mango of Chapainawabganj have been recognised as geographical indication (GI) products from Bangladesh. In addition, the Aman variety of the fragrant Tulshimala rice from Sherpur has also acquired the GI tag, Md Zillur Rahman, deputy registrar (Trade ... Read more

BINA Dhan-25 shows hope

Farmers get higher yield from newly developed rice variety Sajjad Hossain Mannan Joaddar cultivated BINA Dhan-25, a newly developed variety of paddy, on one bigha of land in Moghi village of Magura 93 days ago. The 55-year-old farmer is now over the moon. He had not seen such thin and long grain in his 20 ... Read more

Banana cultivation shows bright prospect

Shykh Seraj Agriculture in Tangail region has changed a lot in the last three decades. Once the land of this region was unfit for any cultivation. Back then, it wasn’t possible to grow crops due to uneven land surface and lack of irrigation facilities. In the early 80s, the topography of Tangail’s Sakhipur, Ghatail, Basail ... Read more

Maize farming leading char farmers to financial stability

Mostafa Shabuj About two decades ago, farmers in remote char areas of northern Bangladesh were quite impoverished due to the consequences of repeated flooding and other natural disasters. Now though, these farmers have achieved financial stability by growing maize, which is more suitable for the region compared to other crops. For example, more profitable crops ... Read more

Farmers find hope in solar-powered irrigation

EAM Asaduzzaman Life is easier now for Abu Taleb, 45, a potato farmer of Saddyo Puskuruni village in Rangpur. A year ago, high irrigation costs for diesel-run pumps, which he bore out-of-pocket, made it difficult for him to provide for his three children. Now, after switching to solar-powered irrigation, his livelihood has changed for the ... Read more

Shoilmari: A river dead, livelihoods endangered

Dipankar Roy The once mighty Shoilmari river in Khulna’s Batiaghata upazila can now only be called a river on paper. In just three years, it has been filled with silt. The once 150-metre-wide river has now turned into a 3 to 4-metre narrow channel. Boats cannot sail there in low tide and people can cross ... Read more

Countrywide heavy rains until 13 Sep

News Desk : dhakamirror.com The current heavy rains brought on by the depression at the Bay of Bengal are predicted to last until Tuesday, according to the weather forecast service. The low will weaken in next 24 hours and move towards the plain land through Odisha and towards Chhatishgarh through West Bengal afterwards. Mostafa Kamal ... Read more

120 hills disappeared from Chattogram in 4 decades

An environmental group called Bangladesh Environment Forum alleged Sunday that 120 hills had vanished from Chattogram city in the past forty years. The port city’s hills decreased from 32.37 square kilometers in 1976 to 14.02 square kilometers in 2008, according to a written statement from the forum’s general secretary, Aliur Rahman. He was addressing during ... Read more

A young agro enthusiast helping farmers in Tangail

Mirza Shakil When the pandemic hit and in-person classes at universities were suspended, Shakil Ahmed, then a final-year student of agriculture department at Noakhali Science and Technology University, had returned home. But he refused to sit idle, and so, asked his father for a plot of land to farm squash. The yield was massive as ... Read more

Brood fish release sample eggs in Halda

Brood fish in the Halda have released sample eggs – indicating full spawning – since Saturday night at various points of the river. Egg collectors got 200-500 grammes of eggs on average since Saturday night from the river. Ashu Barua from Madunaghat area, a seasoned egg collector, told The Daily Star that they started coming ... Read more

Ban on catching hilsa to end at midnight after 2 months

The ban on catching hilsa will be lifted at midnight today after two months. The fisheries department said due to the two-month ban, it will be possible to collect the desired target of 6 lakh tonnes of hilsa fish this time, reports our Barishal correspondent. However, many fishermen said they are not interested in going to ... Read more

Second chance at education for Pirojpur elderly

“I never knew there’s so much beauty and fun hidden inside a book,” said 44-year-old Salma Begum, who learned to read and write very recently. “I had to blindly trust anyone who could read to let me know the contents of important documents. Now I’m self-sufficient in that regard, and use my own signature instead of ... Read more

Barind farmers at mercy of DTW operators

Ethnic minorities suffer more Suzon Ali . Rajshahi Farmers in the Barind region are held hostage by Barind Multipurpose Development Authority deep tube well operators. Some farmers in the region said that deep tube well operators did not irrigate their land properly while others said that operators extracted extra money and ‘undue benefits’ from them. Talking ... Read more

Local seeds for local needs

Female farmers of Khulna exchange varieties at fair Dipankar Roy Seeds of local varieties – preserved by families for generations – have been the most adaptive way of cultivation for the distinct climatic conditions of the country’s coastal areas. In what is considered a yearly tradition, female farmers exchange the seeds at the “seed fair”, ... Read more

Ingenious indigenous innovation

Kabuljan Begum’s eco-friendly oven makes waves across Rajshahi Anwar Ali Fourteen years ago, Kabuljan Begum developed an environment-friendly oven to keep herself and her family safe from air pollution caused by open-fire ovens. Her solution has now become the go-to choice for hundreds of others in the rural areas of Rajshahi region, covering three districts ... Read more

Tow month long hilsha fishing ban imposes from today

In a bid to conserve Jatka or juveniles of hilsa, the government has imposed a two-month ban on netting, selling and transporting hilsa in six sanctuaries from today (March 1). Bimal Chandra Das, fisheries officer of Barishal, said the ban is going to be observed across 432km area of six districts, including three in Barishal division. ... Read more