Dredging gives Titas new lease of life

Titas Upazila in Comilla district nowadays witnesses uninterrupted movement of water vessels in the Titas and normal operation of the irrigation network in the immediate vicinity following dredging of a channel of the river under a project undertaken by the government.
Project officials said restoration of regular flow of water in the river has brought back vibrancy in public life in the surrounding areas in the form of boosting local economic activities alongside having a visibly positive impact on the ecology.
The Local Government and Engineering Department (LGED) under the Ministry of Local Government, Rural Development and Co-operatives completed the pilot project dredging 11.3 kilometres area of the river.
The project covers an area from Char Kumaria to Machimpur point via Batakandi Bazar in Comilla, where the Titas meets with the Kathalia River.
The scheme, taken during the fiscal year (FY) 2014-15, was implemented as part of the Second Rural Transport Improvement Project (RTIP-II) at a cost of Tk97.6 million, jointly provided by the World Bank and the Bangladesh government.
Highlighting the project, LGED Chief Engineer Shyama Prosad Adhikari said the just-completed dredging project was a part of the Prime Minister's vision to develop rural connectivity for sustainable economic development of the local communities.
He noted dredging work has restored the normal water flow in the river although the channel previously had merely three-four months' water flow during the rainy season.
The constant flow of the river water will have a tremendous impact on livelihood of the local people generating new employment opportunities in the fields of fishery, agriculture, river transport and so on, he added.
Small entrepreneur Mohammad Taijul Islam told the FE, "I can now easily take bricks and sand from Machimpur to Batakandi and other areas at a low cost using the river route and it enables me to expand my business further."
A farmer near Machimpur Bazar, Md Harun, who was preparing his agricultural land for the ensuing season, said the river used to witness water flow for three or four months only during rainy season over the past 10 to 15 years.
But on completion of the dredging work, he observed, water can still be seen flowing in full stream even in the month of December- thereby enabling farmers to irrigate their crop fields, which they had to do earlier using groundwater.
While talking to this correspondent, several fishermen on the riverbank said almost after a decade they can now catch fish in the river even during winter season.
Inland water transport (IWT) expert Golam Mostafa, who worked as a consultant of the RTIP-II river dredging project, said the length of the project area was 11.3 kilometres while the width was around 20 metres in the narrow part of the river and 25 metres in the wider part.
Excavation of the riverbed using local technology at a low cost will encourage LGED to initiate dredging projects using the same model in the future, he hoped.
Lawmaker from Comilla-2 Mohammad Amir Hossain Bhuiyan said although Bangladesh is a land of rivers, a good number of them are dying because of multi-dimensional reasons including climate change.
If dredging is done regularly, the opportunists will not be able to illegally occupy the river or fill in the riverbed, he opined.
Around half a million people will directly or indirectly benefit from completion of the dredging project in the river, the parliamentarian said.
ahb_mcj2009@yahoo.com