Silt Up Of Kobadak River
Thousands in southwest marooned
Thousands of people living in the Kobadak river basin which covers parts of three districts in the country’s south-west continue to suffer as their homesteads have been under water for more than four months. The areas—parts of Tala upazila in Satkhira, and a some parts of Keshobpur upazila in Jessore and Paikgachha upazila in Khulna—became waterlogged from monsoon rain as the rain-water has not flushed back into the adjacent Kobadak river which has been silted up.
In the affected areas, the Kobadak riverbed is higher than the adjacent beels (marshy land), said sources in the upazila administration.
People living in the affected area mainly depend on agriculture, but they have not been able to grow any crop in their fields in the past months since they are waterlogged. There is no hope that this will change soon.
In addition, a large number of fruit-trees on their land have already died.
Many villagers have fallen in debt to local money lenders and non-governmental organisations.
In Tala upazila alone, around 71,000 people from 21,000 families living in 46 villages were affected with around 400 families totally displaced by the waterlogging, according to the latest information collected by Tala upazila administration.
According to available data, 250 houses in the upazila were totally destroyed and 2,510 houses, 20 educational institutions, 20 religious establishments, 10 kilometers of good quality road and 35 kilometers of mud-made road were partialy damaged.
However, ABM Shafiqul Islam, president of Paani Committee, a civic group organisation active in southwest for the past two decades said that the number of affected people and the level of destruction was much higher than the government statistics.
Shafiqul, the principal of Chuknagar College in Dumuria within the district of Khulna, said that the waterlogging problem in the area had been acute since the late 1990s, but that it had taken a serious turn in the last couple of years.
The Tala upazila administration office compound, considered to be higher than many other parts of the upazila, was still under water.
Anil Biswas, convener of Kobadak Banchao Andolon, said that though parts of Keshobpur upazila was under water for months together, it dried up and some of the areas are still muddy.
The affected villagers from that upazilla said that they had been facing severe difficulties with water logging for at least the last five years, and that most of the villagers, even the poor ones, had taken loans to build the bases of their house using brick and cement and had been sleeping on cots to avoid water.
‘The people of the affected areas had been coming to the hospitals with different water borne diseases including scabies, diarrhea and dysentery,’ Jyotirmoy Sarkar, residential medical officer of Tala upazila health complex, told New Age.
‘This year, none came to provide us relief, though the local chairman gave us some rice during the two Eids,’ Kamala Parveen, 45, of village Dholbaria told New Age while she boiled some Kolmi Shak on a mud-made oven on a wooden roof in her living room.
She said that she had collected the Shak from the nearby beel and that her family members often had to pass days eating only boiled shak and no rice.
Kamala showed her hands and legs which were full of scabies and she said the health workers sometimes come to the affected areas but the medicines they gave were inadequate and ‘being waterlogged and poor, it was not possible to do as they say and avoid using the rotten water.’
Villagers also said that education of their children were badly affected due to the water-logging as they could not study properly and go to schools regularly as the small boats and floating banana-rafts were the only means of communication.
Tapan Kumar Sadhu, headmaster of Noapara High School and also a villager of Kalapota, said education at his school was severely affected due to the waterlogging for months. He was worried about the result of his students in the ongoing final examination.
In the badly affected village of Kanaidia in Tala, many families were still living in makeshift shanties on high roads.
‘The span of waterlogging period and height of logged water are increasing every year,’ 65-year-old Shaheed Gazi of Boro Kanaidia, who along with his 11 family members took shelter on the Kanaidia-Patkelghata road, told New Age.
‘The height of water on my homestead was 1.5 feet in 2009, 2 feet in 2010, 5 feet in 2011 and 2012 and it is 6 to 7 feet this year,’ Shaheed said, adding that the situation was almost the same in nearby Chhota Kanaidia, Atghara and Nalta villages.
He said that the base of his house was still under water.
Qasem Sardar, a 62-year-old villager of Noapara, said, to his knowledge, five of the villagers have left the village in the last few months and at least 11 people go to Khulna city every early morning in search of work.
Upazila Nirbahi officer Md Mahbubur Rahman, who was transferred from Tala to Fakirhat in Khulna last week, said that the general relief activities were going on in the affected areas and that he had sent the latest situation report on the affected areas to his senior officers.
He admitted that many affected people had little opportunity to get work.
Mahbubur said that the administration had already begun a 40-day job creation programme in the upazila last week from which a total of 1,396 people would be benefited.
Another official of the upazila administration, however, preferring anonymity, said that the relief activities were too small to meet the demand.
-With New Age input
