Inside Bogura town, the Karatoya, one of the flowing rivers of northern Bangladesh, has in effect become a drain and a rubbish tip. According to the city corporation's conservancy section, 19 trucks make about 100 trips a day to remove at least 250 tonnes of waste. That waste is dumped at points along the riverbank, and from there it washes into the river.
Waste from homes, factories, farms, clinics and markets, and even water used to wash vehicles, goes into the river, the reporter found on the spot, and much of it is tipped by the cleaning staff themselves. The town's large drains also empty into the Karatoya. At Chelopara, Borogola Lalmatirghat and both sides of the Fateh Ali bridge, dirty drain water and rubbish were seen pouring straight in.
Residents have long complained that river land has been taken for houses, shops and large buildings. They say the administration evicts occupiers from time to time, but temporary structures go back up. The river carries some water in the monsoon or in a flood; in the dry season the only flow is black water from the drains. Having lost its depth, the river is losing its aquatic animals and plants, putting the local environment and public health at risk.
The town now runs nine permanent and seven temporary transfer stations, some of them in crowded places such as outside the Silk Development Board office in Banani, Thanthania, the Seujgari agriculture office, the railway station and the Shilpakala Academy at Shibbati. But both of its dumping grounds, at Joypurpara and Erulia, are closed, so with no fixed place to take collected waste, it ends up in the river.
Bogura municipality, founded in 1876, became a city corporation on 20 April this year, but no modern dumping site or sustainable waste system has been built. Ziaur Rahman, general secretary of the Bogura branch of Bangladesh Poribesh Andolon, says the town still has no recycling, and rubbish left in the open is polluting the river water, the soil and the air.
The office of the executive engineer of the Bangladesh Water Development Board in Bogura says it has written to the city corporation asking it to stop dumping in the river, and that a project has been taken up to re-dig the river, protect its banks and restore its flow, to be carried out in phases.
MR Islam Swadhin, the city corporation's administrator, says the corporation is brand new and cleaning staff have been told not to dump waste in the river. Once development funds arrive, he says, work can begin on managing the town's waste properly.
Photo: HBB19 / Wikimedia Commons (CC BY-SA 4.0)
Source: Krishi Shomoy
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