It is well-known to everybody that Bangladesh has about 230 small and large rivers, and a big chunk of the country's 160 million people rely on them for livelihood and for transportation. On the contrary experts state many of them are dehydrating or are overwhelmed due to contamination and violation.
The Buriganga river is one of them. It has served as the central channel to economic life in Dhaka for centuries. It provides access to Bangladesh's numerous waterways for launches and country boats, progressing small and medium scale enterprises. When the Mughals made Dhaka their capital in 1610, the banks of the Buriganga were already a crucial location for trade. The river was also the city's most important source of drinking water.
The river whose average width and depth are 400m and 10m respectively originates from the Dhaleshwari river, near Kalatia, northwest of Dhaka City. The river's junction with the Dhaleshwari varies from time to time, but at present lies 3.22 km southwest of Fatullah. On its course southward, the Buriganga is joined by the Turag river, which provides the central flow of the Buriganga, at Kamrangirchar in Dhaka City.
Unlike many other rivers in the world, the Buriganga river is not only important for providing vital ecological function, but also for various other purposes such as drinking water supply, transportation, cleaning, washing, recreation, ground water recharge, flood control and also as a means of disposing wastes within the assimilation capacity of the river. Currently, there is no establishment of any irrigation project which depends on the water of this river.
The greater opportunities for business and trade and easy communication are the main reasons for the high population density along the river banks. However, the massive urbanisation and population growth along the banks of the river has made it vulnerable from the discharge of industrial effluents, sewage, household and commercial wastes.
Due to siltation, the river's length has diminished from 27 km to 18 km. The random throwing away of domestic and industrial wastes, along with the failure of authorities to implement existing rules to protect the ecological health of the river, has worsened the situation to the point where the Buriganga river is dehydrating biologically and hydrologically.
While all the rivers of Bangladesh are endangered by climate change, the Buriganga specially is under pressure against more direct human threats, together with household and industrial contamination like industrial discharge, boat fuel discharge, domestic garbage, insufficient sewage treatment and mismanagement and haphazard augmentation.
It is seen that water management in Dhaka with 14 million residents faces copious challenges such as submerging, pitiable service quality, groundwater exhaustion, insufficient cleanliness, contaminated river water, unintentional municipal development, and the subsistence of great slums where more than one-third of its inhabitants resides.
It is a matter of great sorrow that dwellers of Dhaka get pleasure from one of the lowly water taxes in the world, which curbs the utility's capacity to invest. The effectiveness in charge of water and hygiene in Dhaka, DWASA, bears in hand these disputes with a digit of quantities.
 It articulates that in 2011 it reached a constant water reserve 24 hours for each day 7 days a week, an increase in revenues so that functioning costs are more than wraped, and a decrease of water goes by from 53% in 2003 to 29% in 2010.
Rajdhani Unnayan Kartripakkha formulated rainwater harvesting for newborn houses obligatory in an attempt to address water insufficiency and diminish flooding in 2011.
Khwaja Abdul Ghani, the upper classes that governed Dhaka under the British colonial authorities, kept a vital role to make the initial piped drinking water system in Dhaka that was began in 1874. The system was supplied by a water treatment plant in Chadnighat close to the margin of the river Buriganga.
Subsequent to liberty from the British in 1948 the Department of Public Health Engineering of the Pakistani government was in charge of drinking water supply as well as hygienic drains and stormwater drainage.
Even though Dhaka is situated on the banks of the Buriganga river, only 18% of its drinking water supply comes from superficial water as it is highly contaminated. Some 82% of the city's water supply is abstracted from groundwater through 577 deep tube wells, while four comparatively small superficial water treatment plants provide the remaining 18%. Groundwater levels are dropping at two to three metres every year. The city's water table has sunk by 50 metres in the past four decades and the closest underground water is now over 60 metres below ground level.
DWASA has eleven revenue zones. It sets a zone-wide annual target for billing, collection and reduction of non-revenue water. In at least three revenue zones utility staff are in charge of billing and collection directly, while in the other revenue zones this is done by an employees' cooperative, the Employees' Consumers Supplies Cooperative Society Ltd (ECSCSL), under contract with the utility.
Waterways are the only communication media for the people of the region for carrying out their day-to-day socio-economic activities. But till to day no proper passenger service could have been opened in the area by the private sector.
BIWTC is a service oriented commercial organisation in the public sector. With the aim of transforming BIWTC into a commercially viable organisation, in accordance with the strategic plan of the IDA proposed IWT-III project, the BIWTC has been transformed into a unit basis organisation and it is performing its activities in different units such as Ferry Service Unit, Passenger Service Unit, Cargo Service Unit, Ship Repair Service Unit.
BIWTC is providing day/night ferry services on various routes to connect Northern and Southern regions with the Eastern region of the country by bridging the road gaps.
BIWTC is accountable for operation of passenger services both on internal water routes and in the coastal areas and off-shore islands of the country. Those off-shore islands are inhabited by tens of millions of people and are also getting populous day by day.
Passenger Service Unit is mainly engaged in carrying passengers in the inland waterways, coastal areas and off-shore islands.
Cargo Service Unit of BIWTC is mainly responsible for carrying of various kinds of commodities like food, food grains, jute & jute goods, cement, clinker, fuel and petroleum products from Chittagong and Mongla ports to different inland river ports of the country.
Under Ship Repair Service Unit there are 4 dockyards and one Floating Dock located at Narayanganj for repair and maintenance of Corporation's own vessels.
Nowadays, the Buriganga river is afflicted by the different problems of pollution. The chemical waste of mills and factories, domestic waste, medical waste, sewage, dead animals, plastics, and oil are some of the Buriganga's pollutants. The city of Dhaka discharges about 4,500 tonnes of solid waste every day and most of it is released into the Buriganga.
 About 6.0 million people of the city are exposed to the consequences of water pollution every day.
 Besides, the situation had turned worse as all kinds of vehicles, including mostly trucks laden with sacrificial animals, were on way to the country's south-eastern regions from the northern regions.
Successive governments' indifference, mismanagement and lack of planning are attributed to the fall in the standards of some highly acclaimed institutes in the area.
Saving the Buriganga is crucial for saving Dhaka. To save the Buriganga, we all have a responsibility to protect the river from ongoing degradation.
Email: novel.parvez@yahoo.com
Protecting the Buriganga river
Masum Parvez Nobel | Published: January 04, 2014 00:00:00 | Updated: November 30, 2024 06:01:00
We all have a responsibility to protect the river from ongoing degradation
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