The Sirajganj town stands threatened by the River Jamuna after the town protection embankment collapsed on Monday night.
A stretch of at least 70 metres of the embankment on the eastern bank of the river breached.
This is the fourth time the embankment breaded in two years, which created panic among the people of the town.
Water Development Board people, along with engineers, visited the place but they could do nothing at midnight because they did not have enough people and had fewer boats than they needed.
The engineers finally contained the erosion of the river early Tuesday morning by dumping blocks and geo-bags with the help of local people, WDB contractors and army personnel.
WDB officials said that although engineers continued doing bathymetric surveys near the embankment, they failed to get any signal for such an incident even on Monday evening.
People of Sirajganj town get panicked every July in fear of embankment breach.
Many people who had earlier faced river erosion said that the Water Development Board spent crores of takas every year, but they failed to stop such erosion permanently. They finally contain erosion by dumping millions of blocks and geo-bags at the place where erosion takes place.
WDB executive engineer in Sirajganj Sujoy Chakma said, ‘It is hard to make predictions about the Jamuna. We get reading of the bathymetric survey every day but we can do nothing.’
Md Abdul Malek, executive engineer of the Brahmaputra Right Embankment (Specialized) of the Water Development Board, said, ‘We cannot fight against the Jamuna. Every year we take precautionary measures but people think that we do not do anything.’
Lieutenant Colonel Kabirul Islam, the commanding officer of the 10 Riverine Engineering Department of the 98 Combined Brigade, said, ‘We went there to monitor the rehabilitation of the embankment but we had to join emergency work to check erosion.’
The Water Development Board had this 2.5km town protection embankment constructed by Korean Hyundai Company at a cost of Tk 350 core in 1995–2000.
The embankment, for which Hyundai gave a warranty for 100 years, started breaching in the first 10 years.
Nearly 600m stretches of the embankment breached in the past two years. The board had, meanwhile, spent at least Tk 76 core on repairs in 2009–2010 and 2010–2011.
-With New Age input
