Rain dampens Eid holidays
Incessant rain dimmed the Eid festivities across the country. People found it hard to step out of their homes as many roads, especially those in the capital, went under water following three days of rain.
Worse, six lives perished in rain-triggered landslides in Chittagong on Sunday, just a day after the country's biggest religious celebration.
People's sufferings are likely to continue as the bad weather is to continue for a few more days.
In the 24 hours until 6:00pm yesterday, 16mm rainfall was recorded in the capital, down from 90mm on Saturday and 33mm on Sunday. The highest rainfall was recorded in Mongla yesterday, 106mm.
"The rainfall is expected to decline slightly in the next two days before it starts pouring heavily again," said an official of Bangladesh Meteorological Department.
EID WASHED AWAY IN DHAKA
Ankle to knee-deep water on roads forced many Dhaka people to stay mostly indoors during the three-day Eid holidays.
Watching TV is all most of them could do. Even that was not easy for those living in the low-lying areas where waterlogging was a big problem.
Yesterday was the first workday after the holidays but the city streets still looked deserted as those who had gone to their native places outside Dhaka were yet to return and most of those living in the capital chose not go out in the rain.
"Usually we get some passengers two days after Eid as many people go outside to visit different places inside the city. But this year, we're getting a very poor number of passengers due to the bad weather,” said Abdul Kader, helper of a city bus that runs between Mirpur 12 and Motijheel.
"It feels great to drive on these empty streets but we're not getting passengers as they are not stepping outside for the rain," said Anwar who drives a CNG-run three-wheeler.
Like the previous two days, amusement parks and cinemas in and around the capital saw low turnouts yesterday.
"I usually go to amusement parks with my family on the second day after Eid. But this time, we could not go there due to rain and passed our time watching TV," Ariful Islam Arif, a resident of Mirpur-12, said.
Shariful Islam Nabin, a resident of Abdullahpur, said failing to visit his relatives in the city, he passed the holidays playing indoor games with his friends.
DEATHS IN CTG
Six people -- five of whom were children -- of two families were killed in mudslides in two hillside settlements in Chittagong in the early hours of Sunday, prompting the administration to dismantle as many as 50 houses built on risky hill slopes.
Three siblings -- Arafat Hossain, 12, Umme Salma, 5, and one-year-and-four-months-old Bibi Morium -- died in a landslide triggered by incessant rain while they were sleeping inside their home at the hilly Amin Colony in the city's Bayezid area around 2:00am.
In the other incident, Marioum Begum, 30, and her daughters -- Suraiya, 2, and Akinur, 5 -- were buried under a wall that collapsed in a landslide at Pora Colony of Lalkhan Bazar around 1:30am.
Chittagong city again saw two more deadly incidents of hill-slide and wall-collapse killing people living in the foothills, thanks to illegal encroachment of hilly land, unabated hill cutting and lack of initiatives by the administration.
Two people were arrested yesterday for illegally building the houses on the hill slopes and renting them out.
"We have arrested Md Shahabuddin and his brother Joynal Abedin, two of the five so-called owners of these houses at Amin Colony," said Officer-in-Charge Pradip Kumer Das of Bayezid Police Station.
The district administration later tore down 50 tin-built houses there and evicted the families.
"Conducting eviction drives is all the district administration can do. We cannot file cases over hill-cutting, a key reason for mudslides. We have asked the Department of Environment (DoE) to take legal actions regarding this," Deputy Commissioner Mejbah Uddin of Chittagong told The Daily Star.
Contacted, the DoE authorities responded the way they usually do.
"We have manpower crisis. Still, we are trying our best to address the problem and taking legal actions," said Azadur Rahman Mollick, director of the DoE's Chittagong region.
Before Sunday's incidents, at least 191 people were killed in mudslides in Chittagong. Of them, 127 people died on June 11, 2007, alone.
"Eviction drives are being conducted to prevent further loss of lives … We are evicting the illegal settlements but the hill owners have to protect their land after the eviction," said Divisional Commissioner Md Abdullah, who also heads the Hill Management Committee there.
Comments