With the inundation of around 26,000 square kilometers of low-lying areas along with the damages of crops, houses, roads and loss of livestock every year, Bangladesh should have increased number of flood shelter centers and strong river embankments to fight the annual natural phenomenon of food, suggested experts.
“This is the time we should put much emphasis on the application of appropriate technology for construction of river embankments and reconstruction and maintenance of those after carrying out thorough surveys and field investigations to find out solutions for each areas,” water resource management specialist Professor Ainun Nishat told BSS on Thursday in an exclusive interview.
Nishat, also a professor emeritus at private-run BRAC University, described the country’s annual flood situation and conditions of embankments and management of those in three river basins of the country and said a flood protection embankment should be built at Sunamganj point to protect the district town from being inundated with the overflow of river Surma.
He also suggested building strong embankments in Faridpur, Madaripur, Shariatpur, Gopalganj and Jhalakkahti districts along riverbanks in Padma basin and in Jamalpur and Sherpur in Brahmaputra basin, saying the two north-central districts generally witness the acute spikes of flooding.
Ainun Nishat, also a former professor of water resources engineering at the Bangladesh University of Engineering and Technology (BUET), said flood is a single word but it has different characteristics in different areas due to multiplicity of lands, overall atmospheres, wetlands and river characteristics as well, so this thing must be kept in mind in building flood protection embankments.
Talking to media, Professor GM Tarekul Islam, a faculty at Institute of Water and Flood Management at the BUET, underscored the need for proper maintenance and repairing of embankments so that those cannot get damaged or destroyed during floods.
“Many embankments have been damaged and will be destroyed or damaged in the coming days too. There are so many reasons behind why the embankments cannot be repaired and properly maintained and it is not so easy to overcome the setbacks overnight,” he said, adding that blaming only BWDB board would not be fair because many other concerned bodies and some reasons would be responsible for the setbacks.
Islam underscored the need for increasing the budgetary allocations for constant maintenance of embankments apart from construction of those as it needs huge amount of money for the maintenance.
“Maintenance of embankments is not so easy… the embankments stretch over hundreds of kilometers of areas. Rat holes are one of the major reasons behind damage of embankments and sometimes unconscious activities of people also caused the damage of those,” said the flood management expert.
He also stressed on making united efforts in coordination of all concerned ministries and bodies and other stakeholders to this end.
Islam also suggested increasing the number flood shelter centers, saying the country has many cyclone shelter centers at the costal belts but flood shelter centers are not sufficient.
Some government projects remain under implementation to build shelter centers, he said, adding when the shelter centers will be built it will be really helpful for the people in flood prone areas to take refuge there during the time of flood.
