No relief from water crisis for now in Bangladesh

‘Let’s pray for rains,’

No immediate relief from water crisis is in sight for the residents of the capital as Dhaka Water Supply and Sewerage Authority itself is plagued by a number of problems, including lack of sufficient number of generators, inefficient operations of the existing ones and negligence of duties by the employees at the pump stations.
Frequent power outages, dropping down of the groundwater level and mismanagement of the lifted water have aggravated the crisis in the city.
The prime minister, Sheikh Hasina, on Sunday asked the power authorities to provide adequate electricity to the city’s water pumps so that the DWASA could supply sufficient water to its consumers, officials said.
She also directed WASA officials to inform the city residents in advance at what time of the day they would get water supply.
The top and the field-level employees of the DWASA, however, said there was no remedy for the crisis unless there were rains.
‘There are seven to eight hours of power outages a day at my pump station, which results in a drastic fall in lifting of water as the pump usually extracts 2,300 litres per minute,’ Sadek Mia, one of the operators of Gulshan Shooting Club pump station, told New Age on Monday.
Against the backdrop of the power outage, a mobile generator was brought and set up at the pump station on Sunday, he said.
‘All of a sudden, lifting of water by the pump fell to 1,700 litres per minute on Sunday. I have communicated the matter to the head office. The engineers have visited the station but failed to find out the cause,’ Sadek said.
Though Dhaka WASA has the capacity of drawing water up to 205 crore litres per day against a demand for 215 crore litres, the water lifting has dropped to 170 to 175 crore litres because of power outages and fall in the groundwater level.
‘Just two months ago, the water lifting was 2,200 litres per minute, which now stands at only 1,700 litres per minute,’ said Suman Haider, an operator of a pump station at Banani, on Monday.
‘Water lifting at the Dhaka WASA’s pumps has decreased alarmingly during the dry session because of the fall in the groundwater level and frequent power outages. DWASA does not have sufficient number of generators,’ Dhaka WASA managing director, Shahjahan Ali Mollha told New Age on Sunday.
DWASA at present has only 233 fixed generators and 41 mobile generators for its 514 deep tube-wells. As a result at least 270 tube-wells remain unutilised during power outages.
When his attention was drawn to the state of the generators, he said, ‘WASA has decided to procure 200 more generators to solve the power crisis. But it will take another year to procure and set them up.’
‘Let’s pray for rains. Once there is a heavy shower, the problem will disappear to a large extent,’ the managing director said.
‘As we cannot manage generators for each of the pump stations overnight, the authorities concerned have decided to give an alternative connection to each of the pump stations,’ Mollah said.
‘Besides we have taken up a crash programme aiming at improving our internal management so that operators at the pump stations can work efficiently and regularly. We are also making preparations for increasing the number of mobile units so that people can get water from the lorries whenever they want,’ Mollah said.
Groundwater level in Dhaka city is getting depleted by 1.0 to 1.5 meter each year as water supply is heavily dependent on it.
The city will have to wait until there is a lot of heavy rain for the groundwater level to be recharged.
Of the total demand for water, 85 per cent is being met by groundwater. The rest 15 per cent is supplied by three surface water treatment plants in and around Dhaka, using waters from the adjacent rivers.
‘It is not a new problem. We have suffered water crisis in every dry session over the last eight to ten years,’ said Shamsul Haque, an inhabitant of Senpara at Mirupur, where people have long been facing the crisis.
He also accused the WASA officials of favouring influential people in supplying water.

Shibir threatens to shut RMC again

Shibir threatens to shut RMC again


Bangladesh Islami Chhatra Shibir (ICS) Rajshahi Medical College (RMC) unit has threatened to paralyse the college if the authorities take any move to rearrange seats at Shibir-controlled hostels.

Campus sources said a group of Shibir men, led by college unit President Abu Talha and General Secretary Anwarul Haque, met RMC Principal Prof ABM Abdul Hannan at his office yesterday and asked him not to rearrange seats at Shaheed Pinku and Shaheed Kazi Nurunnabi hostels.

They Shibir men said they will shut the college if the authorities do not pay heed to their demand, sources added.

Earlier on the day, the RMC authorities rearranged seats at the two hostels and hung lists of fresh allottees at the entrance of the Shibir-controlled hostels.

The resident students have started returning to their respective hostels as the medical college is scheduled to reopen today.

As per decision of the academic council taken at a meeting on April 24, the college authorities reopened the male and female hostels yesterday.

The meeting also imposed restrictions on rallies, processions and activities of the student organisations on the campus for an indefinite period.

The authorities asked all the students to carry identity cards with them while their stay on the campus and at dormitories. Hostel authorities are checking identity cards of the resident students at the entrance.

A large number of police have been deployed on the campus to avert any further incident.

When contacted, Principal Prof Abdul Hannan said the authorities have rearranged seats at the two hostel as per decision of the academic council.

“We informed the divisional commissioner and police commissioner about Shibir's threat', he said.

RMC was closed sine die on March 13 following a clash between BCL and Shibir on Rajshahi University (RU) campus that left Shibir leader Nomani killed and 100 others from both sides injured.

From: The Daily Star

SE Asia will be worst-hit by climate change

SE Asia will be worst-hit by climate change

Southeast Asia will be hit particularly hard by climate change, causing the region's agriculture-dependent economies to contract by as much as 6.7 percent annually by the end of the century, according to a study released yesterday.

The Asian Development Bank study focused on Indonesia, the Philippines, Thailand and Vietnam. Those countries are especially vulnerable because they have large coastal populations facing rising sea levels and rely heavily on rice and other agriculture products which could suffer from water shortages as well as floods. Vietnam was found to be the most vulnerable.

"Climate change seriously threatens Southeast Asia's families, food supplies and financial prosperity," said Ursula Schaefer-Preuss, the ADB's vice president for knowledge management and sustainable development. "If Southeast Asian nations delay action on climate change, their economies and people will ultimately suffer.'

If nothing is done to combat global warming, the report said that by 2100 the four Asian countries would see temperatures rise an average of 8.6 Fahrenheit (4.8 Celsius) from the 1990 level.

All Dhaka Rivers Left Dead

Soft attitude of the government towards polluters and lack of awareness among city dwellers have literally left dead all the rivers and other surface waters in and around the capital.

Over the years the government agencies conducted small-scale drives against the polluters without yielding any major success. The polluters have meanwhile continued polluting the rivers side by side with city dwellers linking excreta discharge to the storm sewerage that ultimately falls into the rivers.

The immediate past caretaker government had earlier directed industrialists to install Effluent Treatment Plants (ETP) at their respective industries by October 31, 2007. But most of the industrialists defied the directive and the government also did not go for action against the violators.

Even the Department of Environment (DoE) does not know exactly how many of the industries have ETPs installed.

"Some industries set up ETPs but don't use those as they need to spend additional money to treat their water," says a DoE inspector.

According to a study jointly conducted by the World Bank and the Institute of Water Modelling (IWM), there are over 300 various effluent discharge outlets from nine major industrial clusters including Tongi, Hazaribagh, Tejgaon, Tarabo, Narayanganj, Savar, Ashulia, Gazipur and Ghorashal.

Of these, 19 outlets carry the major discharge of domestic and industrial waste.

Of the discharged untreated liquid waste, 61 percent are industrial and 39 percent domestic waste, the study shows. The lone Sewerage Treatment Plant (SWP) in Pagla in Narayanganj can treat only 10 percent of the industrial waste.

The primary estimates made in this study show that nearly 330,000 kilograms of BOD is discharged from various polluting sources every day in Dhaka watershed.

"This gives an indication of the extensive pollution loads from various domestic and industrial sources. The situation is extremely precarious particularly during the six months of the year from November to April," the report states.

Over the last 10 years major industrialisation in the Dhaka watershed has been observed, especially in dyeing, washing and textiles sectors. It is estimated that there are over 7,000 industries in Dhaka metropolis located mostly in three clusters -- Hazaribagh, Tejgaon and DND area.

According to statistics from DoE, the number of polluting dyeing mills is 365, tanneries 198, pharmaceutical units 149, engineering workshops 129, chemicals and pesticide factories 118, jute mills 92, rubber and plastic units 63, food and sugar 38, paper and pulp 10, cement and fertilisers five each and distilleries four.

However, the real number is much higher than the statistics, and among all these the dyeing factories and tanneries are the main polluters of the rivers.

Asked why the industries don't use ETPs even if they have it, a DoE chemist explains the reason. He says, "If a dyeing factory produces one tonne of cloth, it discharges 100 cubic metres of liquid waste equivalent to 100,000 litres of water.

"A factory needs to spend Tk 300 to Tk 400 to purify one cubic metre of water excluding electricity and manpower costs.

"They just don't want to spend that money," the DoE chemist says.

Waste from these industries is connected to the sewerage system that directly leads to the rivers around the city. In fact, the rivers have become a dumping ground of all kinds of solid, liquid and chemical waste of bank-side population.

According to the Environment Conservation Rule, 1997, every industry should have an in-house ETP. Otherwise, they would not get from DoE the environmental clearance, which is mandatory to obtain power and gas connections.

Mahmud Hossain, owner of a washing plant in Gazipur, said their industry generated 150 cubic metres of waste water every day.

"We need to spend Tk 8-10 lakh per month for lime, poly electro lime, polly aluminium chloride and polly electro chloride to treat the waste," Mahmud added.

"If we are honest we can treat the wastewater before discharging and even make profit from the business," he commented.




The Daily Star