BSS, Rajshahi :
Sonali Marandi, 38, wife of Naren Marandi, has got access to safe drinking water due to installation of a submersible pump in their Kushumpur Bongaon village under Tanore Upazila in Rajshahi district couple of years ago.
“We had no any dependable source to get water before installing the pump.
Then we had to face a lot of problems during the dry season especially from February to May. But, at present, the pump has become a blessing for us,” said Sonali, a mother of three children, while talking to BSS on Tuesday.
Twenty-eight ethnic minority households like Sonali Marandi are enjoying safe drinking water from the pump that has been installed at a cost of Tk 50,037 in 2017 with financial support of Integrated Water Resources Management (IWRM) project.
Community people and the local Kalma Union Parishad (KUP) contributed ten
percent each of the installation cost.
The nearby Baurigram villagers have also re-excavated a 2.45-kilometer derelict canal and built a check-dam at a cost of around Taka 55.17 lakh with the same participatory approach in the same year.
At present, the canal water is being used to irrigate 80 hectares of cropland and fish culture directly benefiting 280 farming households in many ways.
A consortium of Swiss Red Cross (SRC) and DASCOH Foundation with financial support from Swiss Agency for Development and Cooperation-SDC is implementing the IWRM project in drought affected 39 Union Parishads and three municipalities under eight Upazilas of Rajshahi, Chapainawabganj and Naogaon districts since 2014.
The project is intended to improve the well-being of people by means of promoting coordinated, equitable and sustainable development and management of water, land and related resources.
An SDC delegation led by its Bangladesh Desk Officer Lukas Luescher visited the Bongao and Baurigram villages to see for the IWRM project activities and talked to the beneficiaries on Monday.
SDC Senior Programme Officer Sabina Yasmein Lubna, Tanvir Hassan from SRC
and Akramul Haque and Anwara Begum from DASCOH accompanied the delegation.
The foreign delegates were informed that over 2.80 lakh drought hit-families,
including 80,000 ethnic minorities in 1,280 remote villages, have been brought under the safe drinking water through commissioning of 390 submersible pumps in the high Barind tract.
KUP Chairman Mainul Islam Swapan told the team that the scheme is working to supply safe drinking water in those drought-prone areas where acute crisis of drinking water exists. Its main objective is to supply round-the-year potable water to all people in the targeted area.
He also apprised them that there is a shortage of drinking water in the vast Barind tract during the dry season and the problem has become acute for the last couple of years making the marginalized women especially the ethnic minorities ones worst vulnerable.
In the wake of inadequate aquifer recharge, groundwater level is declining alarmingly in the high Barind tract posing a serious threat to the living and livelihood condition of the marginal population.
