WASA officials, as reported in the press on Monday, have claimed that the sewerage system developed by Dhaka Water Supply and Sewerage Authority decades back hardly covers 25 per cent of the city area. Considering Dhaka’s population of 1.5 crore, the system developed by DWSS is utterly inadequate to meet the growing demand. That is with Dhaka’s population increasing by the day, inadequate measures taken to maintain proper sewage and drainage systems have lead the public health and environment into another nightmarish disaster.
According to reports, the sewerage network was upgraded in the early 80s when the city’s population was less than 50 lakh. Areas like Dhanmondi, Lalmatia, Tejkunipara and Nakhalpara were brought under sewerage network during the upgrade exercise. A government decision taken about 11 years to assign a single agency to look after the city’s drainage to cut down expenditure and provide better service was never implemented. What is more odd is that diplomatic and posh residential areas like Baridhara, Banani, Uttara, Gulshan, Mirpur and Aftab Nagar are not covered by DWASA’s sewerage network. Astounding knowledge shared by experts is that a major portion of around 3.6 lakh cubic metres of excreta (produced by the city every day) is discharged into the four rivers passing by the city and the lakes and canals around it.
Environmentalists have said that this poses a dangerous health hazard to the people living around the aforementioned water bodies and also harms the already degrading environment on such a large scale. Residents of the bustling city have also complained that the water supplied by DWASA is contaminated with sewage and Dhaka Medical College and Hospital doctors have also certified that some water samples do contain traces of dysentery, diarrhoea, jaundice and hepatitis-causing elements.
It is an absolute disgrace for the government that such an immense lack of coordination exists between DWASA and the two city corporations and that the waste treatment plant at Pagla cannot even treat waste from areas covered by the old sewage network. A severe health crisis is looming above us and if appropriate and immediate steps are not taken by the government, we will soon be looking at an environment disaster leading to our doom.
