Sitakunda tribals' unending struggle for water
These tribals, who have had no government facilities for years, are forced to get drinking water from mountain springs and mud pits
The ongoing heatwave has appeared as a scourge for the indigenous people of Sitakunda as the scorching weather is an added misery to an already existing water scarcity stemming from low levels of groundwater in the hilly areas.
Sonaichari Tripura is a village in Sitakunda Upazila of Chattogram. Women of the village must take a daily trip to the mountain spring that cascades down beside their village to fetch water. Some of them carry large water pots on their heads, while some have pitchers on their waists. About 70 women gather there regularly and are forced to spend two to three hours to source clean drinking water.
Generally, women of the small community are responsible for fetching water for the whole family.
Keep updated, follow The Business Standard's Google news channel
"We come to the small waterfall at least 10 times every day, which is located half a kilometre away from our village," Hoimonti Tripura, a housewife from the village, told The Business Standard as she stood next to Sonaichari stream on Tuesday.
"On each trip, we have to wait 30 to 35 minutes and return with water," she said.
Kanchana Tripura, another woman from the village, said the government had installed three tubewells for her village a few years ago, providing them with some relief.
"But now their plight is back as two of the tube wells have been damaged due to the receding water level, while the remaining one does not pull water after 10am," Kanchana said.
Recalling her grief of losing a child to diarrhoea, Kanchana said, "Seventy families depend on the spring water that often makes children sick."
"Two years ago, my 10-year-old child died after drinking the water," she lamented.
As many as 300 Tripura and 15 Garo families live in the hilly areas of Chattogram's Sitakunda. Every year in summer, the water crisis in these communities becomes dire. These tribals, who have had no government facilities for years, are forced to get drinking water from mountain springs and mud pits. The crisis is exacerbated when they dry up during the summer.
Kanchana's brother Kanchan Tripura is the chief of Sonaichari Tripura village. He told TBS that the hilly area of Sitakunda is home to about 2,500 Tripura people.
"Five of the nine Tripura villages here do not have drinking water facilities, while the remaining four have to depend on industrial factory owners and local Bengalis for water," he said.
In 2017, after the death of nine children due to measles in Sonaichari Tripura village, three tube wells were installed, but currently two of them are useless, he added.
"Therefore, these people of the small tribe are forced to drink water from mountain canals and wells, resulting in the children often contracting diseases such as diarrhoea and dehydration," the village chief said.
There is no availability of fresh drinking water in Sitakunda's Shitalpur, Chhota Kumir, Banshbaria, and Chhota Daroga Hat, Tripura villages of the upazila. Residents in these villages collect drinking water from Bengali neighbourhoods located two to three kilometres away.
But the Bengali families living on plain land do not always treat them well, said Bashanti Tripura, a resident of Shitalpur Tripura village.
Besides, in this year's searing summer, most water sources in the area have dried up, causing a severe scarcity of water needed for agriculture.
This problem is becoming more pronounced due to industrial plants taking water through boreholes and deep tubewells, said Monir Ahmed, chairman of Sonaichari Union Parishad.
"As the water level is falling at an alarming rate, only ring tubewells are allocated by the government in these areas. But in the dry season, these tubewells become useless," the chairman said.
Chairman of Kumira Union Parishad, Mohammad Morshed Hossain Chowdhury said the water crisis is also intensifying in the plains. "Around 300 families of Rahmatpur and Mohammadpur of the union face severe water shortages when the dry season comes."
Despite great potential, farmers in the area are deprived of at least Tk25 crore worth of agriculture production due to a lack of water, he added.
Upazila Public Health Engineer Rasheduzzaman said the water levels of Sonaichari and Kumira were at 40-50 feet when tubewells were installed, which have now dropped below 100-120 feet.
"As a result, about 1,000 tube wells installed earlier are now useless. This problem is more acute in hilly areas," he said.
Finding solutions
Officials of the Bangladesh Water Development Board said the government has taken up a project to solve the water crisis in Sitakunda and the surrounding areas.
The project proposes the construction of reservoirs with dams upstream of four canals in the Mirsharai and Sitakunda upazilas. The reservoirs will hold 13.7 million cubic metres of water annually.
The board's Executive Engineer Nahid Uz Zaman Khan said the Institute of Water Modelling (IWM), a trustee of the water resource ministry, is working on a hydrological and morphological model.
Besides, the Center for Environmental and Geographic Information Services (CEGIS) is working on environmental and social impact assessment.
Work on the project commenced in November 2021 and is expected to be completed in June this year.
Once done, a development project proposal (DPP) will be framed and sent to the Ministry of Water Resources for approval. If it gets the ministry's nod, the project will be implemented to solve the water crisis in the area.
