Swelling Balu sends students on 1.5km detour

Over a hundred students of Prof Ali Ahmad School and College in the capital's Khilgaon have been left without a direct road to their institution since Monday when a part of the mud street connecting it with their villages was washed away by water from the swelling Balu River.
The students, from Nagdarpar and Nasirabad villages, now need to take a 1.5km detour or use boats to attend classes. It takes one more hour than the usual time, said the villagers.
The 1,700-foot long and 15-foot wide road in Kazir Jaiga, another village where the institution is located, is connected with Nagdarpar. The onrush of water has swept away about a 25-feet stretch of the road around 2:00pm on Monday, affecting more than a dozen families and fish farms there.
“My students are the worst sufferers of the damage,” said Abdul Hakim Sardar, principal of the college, which stands 200 yards from the broken part.
Musa Ratul, a fifth grader from Nagdarpa, said, “I had to start one hour earlier than the usual time to reach school in time.”
But all were not like Ratul.
“Six to seven students of my class, at 9:00am, came in late and blamed detours for that,” Hakim said, calling for immediate repairs of the road.
Echoing the teacher, Nasirabad Union Council member Samir Ali and said he had already talked to senior officials. “I hope that the repair work will start tomorrow,” he told The Daily Star.
Joj Miah, who along with nine others built fish farms over a vast tract of the low-lying area, braces for losses, as fish have made their way out through the damaged part. “We had invested some Tk 15 lakh and expected to make around Tk 15 to Tk 20 lakh, but all is gone,” he said.
The Flood Forecasting and Warning Centre (FFWC), however, called it an “isolated incident” and said there was little possibility of flooding in and around Dhaka in next few days.
Ripon Karmaker, duty officer of the FFWC, told The Daily Star that the water levels of the rivers around Dhaka--the Buriganga, Shitalakkhya, Turag, and Balu--might rise in the next 72 hours but these were still below the danger level.
“Besides, the water levels [in the rivers] are rising very slowly. So, we don't see any possibility of flooding in and around the capital in two or three days,” he said, adding that inundation of low-lying areas near the rivers was common in the monsoon.