A sluice gate built at a cost of Tk 60 lakh in Fulgazi, Feni, lies useless. Farmers say the gate, built by the Bangladesh Agricultural Development Corporation (BADC) at Badarpur, a border area of Munshirhat union, has instead become a thorn in their side.

According to sources, the costly sluice gate was built in 2021 by VP Nurul Amin, proprietor of Messrs Ria Enterprise and a former chairman of Munshirhat union parishad. At its inauguration on 20 January that year it was found that, because the gate had been built without proper planning, irrigating 500-600 hectares of higher land had become difficult.

A visit to the site found the sluice gate standing idle. Over nearly five years, soil thieves have dug away the earth of the embankments on both sides of the gate, which was built on the Tetoiya chhara, a stream flowing down from India. Farmers allege that they have heard nothing from BADC since it was built. In this way, more than half a crore taka of government money has gone to waste in the fields of border Badarpur.

Local people say that even when the gate was closed at the time, it could not hold water, which leaked out underneath. And because the gate was built lower than the canal bank, irrigation of a large part of the cultivated land has become uncertain. Farmers' hopes have turned to despair.

Abdul Kuddus, a farmer living near the Tetoiya chhara at Badarpur, said in the local dialect that the work done by chairman Nurul Amin had not brought them even four paisa's worth of benefit.

Farmer Tofayel Ahammad said: "This work was done in 2021. We protested, and the chairman beat my maternal cousin."

Farmer Air Ahmed said: "Because of the sluice gate, which was built in the hope of two crops a year, it will not be possible to grow crops here within the next few years."

Local farmer Alam said: "It was done to help with water, but there is no water. Allocations came two or three times, and the sluice gate just stands there."

Local people have demanded that the government take the necessary steps to rebuild the sluice gate.

Md Ali Miazi, deputy director of BADC in Feni, said the matter concerned engineering, not him. Repeated calls to the office's assistant engineer, Kamrul Hasan, found his phone switched off.

BADC built the sluice gate at Badarpur on the Tetoiya canal at a cost of Tk 60 lakh to hold water and keep cultivation going through the season. The large hydraulic structure was built without proper planning on the canal in the 2019-20 fiscal year under a minor irrigation development project.

Source: Jagonews24. First published in Bengali on The Agro News.