Water crisis in the city

A picture published by this newspaper on Thursday showed residents of Mirhazirbagh, Jatrabari demonstrating on the road with empty pitchers and placards. Their plight due to the scarcity of water supply led these people to take to the streets as was highlighted by the accompanying report. And yet, given that the problem of water scarcity is not new, and every year we hear of communities plagued by the lack of this absolutely essential item, the response by authorities to fix it seems far from adequate.

Residents of Banasree, Kaderabad Housing, Katasur, Dakshin Khan, Kalshi Mirpur – to name just a few areas – have been affected. According to officials, the crisis has been due to load shedding, malfunction of deep tube wells and ground water depletion: nothing that could not have been predicted. Yet, residents of these areas are having to wake up at odd hours to collect a few drops of water. The Wasa supply trucks that remained a hope are too few in number and irregular to be of any lasting consequence. Add to that the month of Ramadan, and the scenario that now plagues residents of these areas can be understood in its full intensity.

The Managing Director of Dhaka Wasa has said that this is a common scenario during the dry season since deep tube wells malfunction during the time. If this trend is known, then the question is, why adequate preparation was not taken ahead of time to deal with it? The MD has himself stated that there has been no reduction in water production. So the problem must be one of logistics rather than one of supply. We understand that Wasa itself has infrastructural constraints. But, given the seriousness of this not so uncommon crisis, and the fact that it is the socially vulnerable that suffer the most, we demand Wasa deals with it with the importance such an issue deserves. Better management of logistics could ease the suffering, if not fully eradicate it.