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Dhaka ﻿Monday﻿ ﻿March﻿ ﻿23﻿, ﻿2020﻿, chaitra 9 , 1426 BS

We need a collective strategy to fight COVID-19

Coordination among private and public initiatives is crucial
As more and more people are testing positive with COVID-19 every day, with the actual number of people infected still unknown to us, fear has gripped the nation. People are worried for all the right reasons—the government still does not have any comprehensive plan to tackle the humanitarian crisis unfolding in the country, our hospitals do not have the capacity or approval to test and treat patients infected with the disease, we do not have the required amount of test kits, our doctors and medical staff have not been provided with enough personal protective equipment (PPE) to treat the suspected COVID-19 patients, and self-isolation or home-quarantine measures have not been found to be successful. However, amid the growing public concern over the government’s sloppy preparations to contain the spread of the COVID-19 in the country, initiatives taken by some voluntary and private organisations have offered us a ray of hope.
One of the most encouraging news for us this time has been the testing kit developed by scientists of Gonoshasthaya Kendra. Globally, it has been proved that testing as many suspected cases as possible is the number one thing to do to contain the spread of the virus, apart from quarantine measures and lockdowns. Thus, in order to make testing accessible to all, the government needs to provide Gonoshasthaya all the support it needs to produce the testing kits on a massive scale.
Besides, we have come across some individual and organisational efforts to help the mass people deal with the corona crisis. Amid huge PPE crisis in our hospitals, some private organisations, including Buet alumni association and some garment industries have started producing them, to be distributed among doctors, nurses and medical staff free of cost. It is good to know that the PPEs produced by them have already got the health ministry’s approval.
Initiatives taken by Bidyananda Foundation, a voluntary organisation, are underway to fight the spread of the virus. They have been distributing masks and hand sanitisers among people for free and have already set up hand washing facilities in different points of the city. Then there are some student organisations, including Chhatra Union, whose members themselves have been making hand sanitisers and distributing them among the rickshaw-pullers and other vulnerable groups of society. Moreover, many private organisations and hospitals, who are now fully prepared to test patients for COVID-19, are just waiting for the government’s approval.
As we have always witnessed, during any national crisis, it is the general people and the private organisations who always show us the way out. And it is no different this time. But all these private initiatives need to be coordinated to have a greater impact and that responsibility falls on the government. We hope the government would be proactive in coordinating among all the private and public initiatives and make a collective plan to fight the pandemic.

Bhakurta’s natural water source being drained out

An artificially created water shortage
While it is the bounden duty of Dhaka Wasa to provide drinking water to its residents, that cannot be by depriving other areas of drinking and irrigation water. But that is exactly what the Dhaka Wasa has been doing with the water of a natural aquifer in Bhakurta to supply water to the Mirpur residents for the last five years.
The reservoir in Bhakurta, discovered by Wasa about five years ago, was Providential since it was being refilled naturally through an underground channel linked with the Himalayas. What was estimated to last for about 30-40 years has already gone dry because Wasa had been pumping out crores of litres of water from the source with deep tube wells causing severe water crisis not only for the several lakh residents of two unions of Savar, but also of one union in Keraniganj, where the residents have to scrounge for potable water from here and there because even the hand pumps have run dry. The situation has also deprived a vast swathe of land of water for cultivation, that they had benefitted from since 1985, since last one year. The marginal farmers are the worst affected.
Wasa agrees that the situation has been caused primarily by extracting water in excess of its natural replenishment volume. And this is because perhaps no study was done initially to determine the rate of recharge so that the outflow did not outrun the recharge.
While there seems to be no lack of appreciation of the problem, it seems that Wasa and the Local Government Engineering Department are trying to pass the buck on to one another in so far as developing separate network for water distribution for Bhakurta area instead of the current temporary measure. Neither Wasa nor LGED can shirk their responsibility. And there is nothing as “won’t do or can’t do” for government agencies. They should put their heads and resources together to solve Bhakurta’s water problem, and do it quickly.