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Drinking water crisis hits five Bagerhat upazilas

Pond sand filters (PSFs) installed by the government remain inoperative

Partha Chakrabortty, Bagerhat
People of five upazilas of the coastal district are facing acute drinking water crisis as most of the pond sand filters (PSFs) installed by the government remained inoperative for various reasons.
PSFs have been the major source of pure drinking water of the district's Mongla, Rampal, Morrelganj, Kachua and Chitalmari upazilas, where underground drinking water level could not be found due to salinity and excessive presence of arsenic.
As deep tube wells do not work there, water from ponds and rain serve as the only source of drinking water for the residents of the vast areas.
And with most of the PSFs inactive, they have to buy drinking water every day or drink the contaminated water of the pond, people told this correspondent during a recent visit to the area.
They also said that water crisis turns acute at this time of the year when mercury soars and the rain stays away.
“We have no pure drinking water in our village. The only PSF has gone out of order. So, 1 have to buy 20 litres of water from a
container for Tk 40. It is not possible for me to buy water every day," Pobitra Das, a resident of Sangdia village of Kachua upazila, told this correspondent.
The people of Sangdia, Afra and Kalmibuniya villages of Badhal union has to collect water from places three to six kilometers away," said Monoranjon, adding that PSF at the nearby Afra village was also not working.
The canals and private ponds are filled with saline water and impossible to drink, he added.
Similar situations prevail in Bhojpatia and Parikhali, Sadar, Mallikerber and Bastoli unions and some parts Hurka union of Rampal upazila, said Bhojpatia union parishad Chairman Nurul Amin.
"We have only one government PSF that is undergoing re-digging now. This caused acute water crisis. We have to buy 30 litres of water forTk 70,” said Amin, adding that most people can't afford to buy water every day.
Most people use contaminated pond water, which causes various waterborne diseases, he said, adding that children, women and aged people are suffering
most.
The same problem is prevailing in Mongla municipality and rural areas of Chitalmari and Morrelganj upazilas.
Prashanta Saha, a hotel owner at Chitalmari Sadar Bazar, said there are 100 to 150 restaurants and food shops as well as 200 tea stalls at different markets and most of them use pond water for cooking.
"I used to pay Tk 70-90 for every drum of drinking water, but it has gone up to Tk 100-120 as the suppliers now have to fetch water from longer distances," Saha said.
The Public Health Engineering Department (PHED) has so far installed 2257 PSFs in nine upazilas of the districts since 1984. But when contacted, the executive engineer of the district's PHED SM Shamim Ahmed said he has no update of how many of them are functional now.
"We have no authentic information about how many of the PSFs are inactive, said Ahmed.
He however said that some PSFs in Mongla, Rampal and Morrelganj have been contaminated with saline water.
Once saline water enters into a PSF
pond, it is not possible to drink the water again as the PSF has no capacity to covert the saline water into sweet water, he added.
He also said that they are trying to install some ROs (reverse osmosis) system, an advanced water purifying technology, in those areas.
Ahmed said that they were working on to dig deep to find underground drinkable water level in those five upazilas.
"We have tried up to one thousand feet below the earth for installing deep tube well about three years ago but did not get preferred water level. Now we have another project to search the water level in 1500 feet. If we get sweet water there then it would be an epoch-making event to solve the water crisis," he said, adding that until then pond or rain water would be the only source of drinking water for the people of those areas.
Asked how they were going to solve the present crisis of water, he said, "The government has arranged digging of 106 ponds at the cost of around Tk 30 crore under two projects. The work will be completed soon."