Sylhet city dwellers are suffering from acute crisis of drinking water as the city corporation has failed to fulfill the demand. It has the capacity to supply only 2.5 crore liters of water per day against a demand of about 8 crore liters in the metropolis.
There are only 2 plants at city’s Shah Eidgah and Tupkhana areas from where water is supplied to the City. Among these two, Tupkhana area’s plant can supply only 6,00,000 liters and condition of this plant is too poor; and it is becoming unusable gradually.
Mousumi Aditya, a housewife of Kastaghar area in the city, told that ‘People of this area are badly suffering due to the water crisis in this scorching hot season – when a lot of water is needed. But the corporation does not supply sufficient water to meet our demand.’
She further informed, ‘We also agitated on Kastaghar-Mahajan potty road few days back in demand of water supply from SCC and the SCC authorities at the time gave commitment that they would solve water crisis of this area but that commitment is yet to be implemented.’
An Architecture student of Shahjalal University of Science and Technology (SUST) Ivy Haque, told that the drinking water facility is too poor in Sylhet City. She added, while engaged in Urban Planning Design at South Surma area in the city, she observed 100 females busy in collecting drinking water from a lone tube-well in the area.
Department of Public Health Engineering is constructing two water treatment plants with capacity of 2 crore liters at Kuitek area in the city at a cost of Tk.50 crore which will meet only one third of the net water demand in the city.
An official of SCC told that, owing to scarce water supply, the corporation is allowing dwellers to install deep tube-wells in different areas; and this process is causing the fall in underground water level. As a result, the underground water level has gone down from 90 feet to 150 feet below from the surface in Sylhet city area.
