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.