Long lines of parched residents waiting
with buckets or other containers in front of a Wasa truck has become an
all too familiar scene for Dhaka dwellers and all indicators suggest
that the situation will get worse before it gets better, if it ever
does.
The Bangladesh Government must do more to address the outstanding water needs of the capital, Dhaka, as experts warn that unless efforts are stepped up, things will worsen.
The city requires 2.2 billion litres a day, but can only produce 1.9 to 2 billion, the city’s Water Supply and Sewerage Authority (WASA) reported.
“Stronger action is needed now. Government steps in addressing this
problem to date have been inadequate,” Khairul Islam, country
representative of NGO WaterAid in Bangladesh, told IRIN.
The official population of Dhaka is 12.8 million but unofficial
estimates put the actual figure at closer to 15 million, including some
3.4 million living in slums. Another 300,000 to 400,000 people migrate
to the city each year, which has witnessed a four-fold increase in its
population in the last 25 years. According to the World Bank, the
mega-city has the highest population growth in the world.
Much of Dhaka’s water problem centres on its over-dependence on ground
water, and water specialists say the city needs to increase its usage of
surface water sources like ponds, rivers and canals. The World Bank
notes that Dhaka-WASA (DWASA) obtains most of its water from
overexploited aquifers.
Power outages and a drop in the water table during the annual dry season
from March to May mean DWASA is unable to extract enough water to meet
demand. Shortages in early April were so severe in some parts of the
city that many didn’t get water for days, while others complained that
it was undrinkable. Scores of people protested.
Some 700 patients are currently being treated for diarrhoea a day
against a normal average of 250 to 300 per day, the International Centre
for Diarrhoeal Diseases and Research Bangladesh, reported on 23 April.
Feroze Ahmed, former professor at BUET and a water expert, agrees that
the city’s now annual water woes are largely the result of
over-dependency on ground water. “Initiatives to cut the dependency and
[increase] use of surface water should have been taken much earlier,” he
said.
However, the managing director of Dhaka WASA, Taqsem A Khan, says the
government is well aware of the problem and has already taken a number
of steps to address it, including the procurement of generators to
extract ground water during power outages.
“This is a minor problem. In an unplanned mega-city like Dhaka, if four
or five per cent people face problem to get water, it is a normal
situation,” Khan said. Moreover, a long-term plan is now in place to
reduce the city’s dependency on ground water, but it would take time, he
noted.
“What WASA is doing is increasing production in a crisis situation,”
said Mujibur Rahman, a water expert and professor at the Bangladesh
University of Engineering and Technology (BUET), adding that the
government’s strategy of increasing production as demand increases
simply will not work.
Rains in mid-April improved the situation but the problem is unlikely to
go away. “The source of water is not properly managed, which will put
the city at risk of severe water shortage in the future,” Rahman warned,
citing the heavy dependency on hundreds of tube wells throughout the
city to extract more water.
To create a tube well, a pipe, usually 10cm to 20cm in diameter, is
bored into the ground until the water table is reached. A strainer at
the base prevents grit from being sucked up into the pipe by the pump
placed at the top, which brings water to the surface and into a small
reservoir or dam built to receive it. The depth of a tube well depends
on the depth of the water table.
WASA runs 600 deep tube wells in the city to extract water, and there
are also 2,000 private tube wells throughout the city. About 87 percent
of Dhaka residents use ground water, mostly from deep tube wells, while
the rest use treated surface water.
Each year this time, the recurring water crisis in Dhaka brings people
out in protest. In 2010 troops had to guard water pumps in some areas.
Civil and environment rights groups like Citizens Rights Movement, the
Green Club of Bangladesh and the Council for Implementation of
Environment-Friendly and Liveable Dhaka have called for the resignation
of the WASA chief.
The 2012 UN-Water Global Analysis and Assessment of Sanitation and
Drinking Water report released in April, notes that 70 percent of
countries are falling behind the trends required to meet their access
targets for drinking water.
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