Life in DND dam: Marooned for 2 months (video)
For two months of rainy season every year, life comes to a standstill for thousands of people living in the Dhaka-Narayanganj-Demra dam area due to waterlogging.
While subsequent governments since the last eighties keep their eyes shut to this recurring problem, the people in the area either remain confined to their homes –or are forced to leave their homes temporarily to stay at their relatives’ homes far away where life is normal.
The kids do not go to their schools—because the ways to their schools are under knee-deep water. Most people also get various skin diseases.
Even the domestic animals including dogs and cattle become sick due to lack of proper nutrition. And you can see snakes creping by your window where murky water remains unchanged for the period.
“I along with my parents am going to my grandmother’s house. We cannot live here anymore,” Shopna a six-year-old child told The Daily Star Online while wading through the flood water that reached her waist.
Inadequate drainage management, illegal occupation, unplanned housing causes the water-logging, Nasir Uddin Mia, chairman of Matuail Union Parishad, told The Daily Star Online. “This is a common picture here in rainy season.”
Around eight to 10 lakh people of the dam area suffer from several problems including crisis of pure water when the rainy season comes every year, he added. “Skin infection is a common disease of the people inside the dam.”
DND dam has been constructed on around seven thousands hectors of land for facilitating an irrigation project there, he said. But it has already been turned into an unplanned residential area. A large scale project is needed to resolve the problem, he added.
The waterlogging started before Ramadan and has become acute due to the heavy rainfall of the last couple of weeks, said Romicha Begum who has been living inside the area for 27 years.
“I and my husband have been affected by fungal infection under our feet. We can’t cook food nor can we manage the same for our domestic animals,” she added.
“Schooling of my two daughters has stopped as the rainwater has marooned us inside the dam. It’s water everywhere but not a drop to drink,” she said.
“Where will we go? How will we continue our schools? Nobody can say. We are unhappy and feeling bad. The government should stand besides us,” a college girl demanded to The Daily Star.
The whole area of the DND embankment was inundated as the as all channels to remove the water have been blocked by the land grabbers, said a dam dweller seeking anonymity.
A middle age woman blamed local influential leaders for the water logging saying they give many commitments to solve the problem when election comes but forget those after the polls.