Sunamganj town people suffer from safe water shortage

SYLHET, Oct 08: The inhabitants of Sunamganj district town has been suffering from acute shortage of pure drinking water for long.

Specially the people living in Sholaghar, Hasonnagar, Jamtola, Dakshin Arpinnagar and Uttar Arpinnagar areas are in much trouble, said a number of locals.

Besides, the existing supply system is also faulty and the water quality is substandard as often dirty water is supplied through the pipelines. At some places however, pipes on the supply line had been lying broken or damaged.

A good number of inhabitants have to collect water from the Surma river often.

A number of locals said they often get dirty water as on some places the drains got in contact with the broken water lines. On the other hand, many people called upon the municipal authority for taking action against the illegal water collectors.

However, the authority also believes a good number of house owners do collect water illegally from their system by setting unauthorised motor pumps. They even through public announcement months ago asked the people to disconnect those.

Habibur Rahman of the Jamtola area said they get water twice daily, but the supply is too scanty and often it is too dirty and unusable. "We want a solution to the problem", he added.

He demanded immediately completion of the new project of water supply as it had been going on for years.

Admitting the crisis, an official at the water supply section of the Sunamganj municipality said 3.2 million litres of water is supplied twice a day.

The municipality would lay 20 kms of new pipelines in the town while there are some works to be done on the new water tank constructed. It would take another six to eight months to complete the rest of the works, he added.

Eighty per cent work on the new water tank had been done as yet the official said. He also said drives would be launched to detect the illegal connections at dwelling houses.

Municipal Mayor Ayub Bakht Zoglu said the Public Health Engineering Department has been working in the water supply project at a snail's pace.

The deadline is already over, but things remained incomplete as yet, he added, we would soon press them for completing the works on the overhead tank and other jobs at an earliest.

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