A report carried in a local English daily on Tuesday said, 65 per cent of tube-well water in the countryside is contaminated by fecal pathogens, apart from arsenic contamination in large parts of Bangladesh. The report based on a study of ICDDR-B said water pumped out from tube-wells becomes contaminated during collection, handling and storage in the households putting human beings at risk to various diseases. Scarcity of safe drinking water has reached a crucial point and it needs government and private sector efforts to overcome the risks.
Availability of and access to safe drinking water is a basic right under the UN Human Rights Council’s resolution of September 24, 2010 making its implementation binding on member governments. It includes rights to water and healthy sanitation. But as we see that the right to safe drinking water is yet to be implemented at the national level or incorporated into public health legislation depriving the vast majority of our population from a healthy life. Consequently they are becoming affected by water-borne diseases of various bacterial origin; apart from typhoid fever, bacillary dysentery and diarrhoea.
Bangladesh is located in a humid and tropical region and is highly vulnerable to waterborne pathogens despite having achieved significant progress in supplying safe water to people. But much needs to be done to remove disparity in the coverage across the country. Healthy sanitary latrine usage is yet to cover every village home in rural areas resulting in the killings of over 100,000 children each year from diarrhoeal diseases. Moreover it has close biological and socio-economic links to malnutrition, poor maternal health, high fertility and child mortality. The risk is much higher at coastal belts because of overlapping impacts of arsenic contamination at many areas.
It is true that the government has passed a safe water supply law in 2013 to ensure coordinated development, management, extraction, distribution, usage, protection and conservation of water resources. The law has also provided for the setting up of a ‘National Water Resources Council’ to be headed by the Prime Minister. But it is yet to be set up only to show that the government has little interest beyond the passage of the law in parliament. The most significant feature of the safe water law is to engage local government bodies to ensure safe water to rural people at union parishad (UP) level and develop sources for it. But it remains neglected so far.
We hold the view that mere legislation is not enough; the government must implement it to bring benefit at the users’ door steps. It is moreover part of the Millennium Development Goal (MDG) set for 2015 showing the setback in achieving it by failing to reach contamination free drinking water to rural people. We suggest stringent punishment to those who pollute sources of drinking water, besides asking the government and non-government organizations (NGOs) to create awareness among the people about safe handling of tube-well water from being contaminated in the process. It is a highly sensitive issue and concerted actions are needed to overcome the risks.
