Waterlogging has become a fact of life in at least five neighbourhoods of Jamalpur municipality, where residents are stranded by standing water for seven or eight months of the year. People are not the only casualties: inside the horticulture centre, water that has stood for three years running has killed more than 150 old litchi trees.

According to the centre's officials, the orchard was established in 1960 with 137 litchi trees. Scions — grafting wood — were taken from them to raise saplings of improved varieties, and each year the orchard's fruit was sold and the revenue paid into the treasury. Water pooling at the base of the trees rotted their roots, and the 66-year-old trees died one by one; mango, dragon fruit and other fruit trees have been damaged for the same reason.

Agriculturist Mohammad Shakhawat Ikram, deputy director of the Jamalpur horticulture centre, said a project to end the waterlogging at the centre is under way and the problem is expected to go once it is complete; the water is already receding, and new litchi trees will be planted where the old ones died.

Residents of Hatchandra, Palashtala and three other areas of the municipality live with the same waterlogging. Aleya Begum of ward 10 said the water makes it impossible to leave the house and the tubewell water is undrinkable. The only road serving more than 200 families in Palashtala is under water all year; moving students and patients is a struggle, and waterborne disease never lets up. Residents say the problem returns year after year because there is no effective drainage.

Dulal Hossain of Palashtala said more than 300 families inside a municipal town are stranded as if by a flood, with no initiative from the local administration to end it. Md Zahurul Haque, executive engineer of Jamalpur municipality, said the cause has been identified and drainage arranged: a drain has been built to carry the water out to the Brahmaputra, which should also bring down the water at the horticulture centre, Hatchandra and Palashtala.

Losing a government mother orchard costs more than a few lakh taka of fruit: it removes a source of scions of improved varieties, which the district's nurseries and fruit growers depend on. Jamalpur shows that a town's drainage is an orchard's problem too.

Source: banglanews24