Villagers in Gaibandha Sadar upazila have dug out and cleared a drainage canal by voluntary labour in Jhinia beel, the wetland lying between Kuptala and Kholahati unions. More than 200 local people joined the work on Friday, 18 September, organised by the community itself.

The beel holds about 300 acres (roughly 120 hectares) of cropland that stays waterlogged even in the dry season, and crop production there suffers every year. In the irri-boro season in particular, even a little rain leaves the fields under water and farmers have to cut their paddy standing in it, so that the crop costs more than it earns.

Locals said the aman season is disrupted by the standing water as well. To ease the problem, the beel's farmers re-excavated and cleaned the existing old canal so that water has a way out.

Farmer Abdus Salam said they had written to various government offices more than once asking for the canal to be dug, without result, and had been forced to do it themselves.

Silted drainage canals in the low beels of northern Bangladesh now put both the boro and the aman crop at risk; the Jhinia beel effort is a case of farmers finding a stopgap without waiting for a public excavation scheme. The report is from the Krishi Shomoy desk.

Source: Krishi Shomoy