Light after ages in darkness

It was by way of a tragedy that an impoverished village came to the attention of the upazila administration and the life of the villagers took a turn for the better.

The remote Monai Tripura Para in the hills of Forhadabad union in Chattogram’s Hathazari upazila had no roads, schools, healthcare facilities or access to electricity. Their woes and plight knew no bound.

Children used to collect wood from the forest and help out the elders in paddy farming on the hills. The word “education” was alien to them and they had never seen the inside of a classroom.

When the sun set on the horizon, the villagers would huddle around a woodfire.

Last year, four children of the village died and 20 more were hospitalised due to an undiagnosed illness.

Immediately after this tragedy, the local administration took measures to improve sanitation and introduce solar electricity in the area. Former environment minister Anisul Islam Mahmud, now a lawmaker in Hathazari, helped secure the necessary budget for the project.

The entire project cost was Tk 9.60 lakh, according to Ruhul Amin, the upazila nirbarhi officer of Hathazari. 

He said the Prime Minister’s Office had allocated a budget for the improvement of sanitation and the installation of tube wells in this remote village.

In just three weeks till January 14 this year, 55 families got access to solar power; they were provided with solar LED lights and sockets to charge their cell phones.

The village, located just 12km east of the Chattogram-Khagrachhari highway, now also has a pre-primary school and a road for easy communication to the heartland of the upazila.

Previously, they had to haul their paddy by walking for three kilometres through the muddy roads in the hills to the nearest kitchen market. Villagers say the new road has made life so much easier for them.

Now they spend time chitchatting in the evenings at tea stalls under solar-lit lamps.

The children go to school and they can take the sick and elderly to the Upazila Sadar Hospital using the newly built road.

Sachin Tripura, the village head of Tripura Palli, told The Daily Star on November 30 that the change was unprecedented.

“Now our children have the opportunity to study. We can move around at night, no matter the time, we have access to drinking water, thanks to the tube wells, and we can travel to the upazila sadar in case of an emergency.”

“Sometimes, when it is cloudy, the solar lamps dim down. We hope to get connected to the national grid in the near future.”

Sitting in front of her home, Santo Lakkhi Tripura, a housewife, said her five-year-old son is now going to   school.

“He wants to be a doctor when he grows up. We never thought it would be possible for us to dream about our future.”

UNO Ruhul Amin said, “We have instructions from the district magistrate to eradicate every crisis being faced by this community. We recently built the road so that they can commute easily, installed three deep tube wells to address the water crisis, and built 10 toilets.”

The administration also built disaster-resistant homes for six families who are exposed to landslides. It has worked towards improving the lives of the 373 villagers over the last one year.

The connecting road was built at a cost of Tk 4 lakh, funded by the Chattogram district administration and Hathazari upazila administration, he added.

It will be turned into a brick road in the near future with a budget of Tk 78 lakh, with funds from the Ministry of Disaster Management and Relief.

The toilets and tube wells were funded by the Prime Minister’s Office at a cost of Tk 9.5 lakh.