It is very worrying that Faidpur’s Padma and Madhumati rivers are swallowing farmlands and houses, leaving hundreds of villagers in the relevant areas in hardships and panic. According to a report in this newspaper yesterday, the homeless people in the region who had earlier received houses under the government’s Ashrayan project are now afraid of losing their houses again due to river erosion.
River erosion, the natural consequence of overflowing of rivers, wreaks havoc in Bangladesh each year washing away everything including the straw huts as well as concrete structures, not to mention the agricultural lands and crops. At present, 6,000 hectares of land is lost due to erosion. It is only natural that the people who live along the banks of rivers will pass their time in fear of losing their properties to erosion.
In floods, after the water recedes, people in distress can return to their damaged habitats, rebuild their homesteads and start their life, but river erosion leaves no hope for its victims, and in many cases of the poor, they end up their life as floating, rootless people in cities. But the people in Faridpur who have now become victims of river erosion need urgent relief to tide over the hard time. It is expected that the relevant local administration would stand beside the people in distress with relief materials.
In financial terms, Bangladesh incurs a whopping $500 million due to erosion annually. And the newly created shelter-less people join the several million people who already lost their belongings due to erosion and are still in need of rehabilitation. Despite the fact that each year, banks of rivers get eroded, the government has failed to take concrete steps to prevent this.
The most useful way of stopping river erosion is building strong embankments, but we have noticed in the past that embankments themselves get washed away by the current of rivers during the rainy season due to faults in planning and engineering. Moreover, the victims of erosion often find shelter on embankments and this affects the infrastructure’s durability.
There was a time, in the eighties, when on an average, 10,000 hectares of land used to wash away annually due to river erosion. Now it has come down to 6,000 hectares. This is partly because rivers are dying, another great problem for Bangladesh. Reportedly, 77 rivers have just disappeared from its map.
However, the country now ought to use state-of-the-art technology to build hydraulic structures including dams, barrages and regulators at strategic points to protect the rivers. But as for the present crisis, the government is urged to stand beside the erosion victims in Faridpur.
