Millions of people living at the city's periphery are in an acute water crisis due to rapid decline in ground water level during the current lean period.

While the army is facilitating water distribution in the city proper, residents of suburban villages of Kholamora, Jhaochar, Shoalmachi, Waaspur, Kanchpur, Zinzira and Trimohoni said most of the tube wells they depend on for water have run dry.

Some villagers said several years ago they used to depend on river water for daily use. "Now the

water of the Buriganga, Turag or the Trimohoni is so polluted that we dare not touch it," said Monwara Begum of Jhaochar.

She also said water crisis is now all-time high as all ponds in her village have been either filled up for housing purposes or polluted with fish feed.

Monwara has five children. Her husband is a fish trader at Swarighat. She said she did not get enough time to bring fresh water for her family every day. As a result, her children are falling sick, going without a bath for days.

In Waaspur, most of the

tubewells are empty of water. Housewives having the responsibility to procure water find it hard to walk miles to fetch water for their families.

"Most of the shallow tube wells were installed in the last 10 years as river water becomes unusable in summer. Most of them are now out of order and the working ones require a lot of manual labour to run," said Monir Hossain, a former Union Parishad member of Jhaochar.

According to the experts of the Water Supply Authority (Wasa), the water level of the city has dropped to

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a record 60 metres from surface and is increasingly becoming unreachable for the 382 deep tube wells operating in the city areas.

"We have no study on the underground water level in the city's peripheral areas but it seems as bad as it is in the city," said a Wasa official requesting anonymity.