No respite for Bhabadaha residents

As if years of waterlogging problem in the Bhabadaha region between Jashore and Khulna was not problematic enough, it seems the Bangladesh Water Development Board's (WDB) efforts to solve this issue are also proving impractical, yielding no significant results. A recent report by this daily has narrated how the board is conducting excavation in the Teka and Hari rivers to draw water away from Bhabadaha. But the contractor responsible for the task is reportedly dumping the sediment back into the rivers just a few feet away from the excavation spots. As such, far from solving the problem, the dumping has caused the rivers to narrow down into three canals, while hundreds of thousands of people are still living knee-deep in stagnant water.

Earlier last year, the WDB began pumping out stagnant water from Bhabadaha using 20 pumps, as part of a project for which they had already spent Tk 2.5 crore by August 2021. The current, largely ineffective river excavation project itself will cost a total of Tk 3.18 crore. Meanwhile, the riverbed is becoming more elevated due to the dumping of sediment, and clogging the entire area's drainage system.

We wonder why the WDB hasn't yet adopted the tried and proven method of getting rid of waterlogging: the tidal river management (TRM). This method entails building an embankment around a beel, leaving two cut points for water to enter and recede from. When the water recedes during low tide, it takes away the sediment deposited on the riverbed in a process of natural excavation and helps the depth of water bodies remain intact. Until 2013, TRM was used in the area for eight years, during which the level of the river was zero at sea level, while it is now silted and thus raised up by around 2.5 metres.

Though there are some drawbacks to employing TRM, we would urge the relevant authorities to consider this approach. This has been a proven method, one in which the affected population has faith. The people of Bhabadaha region deserve to be permanently rid of their long-drawn-out problem of waterlogging, which has brought only misery in their lives.