The looming crisis of clean water supply and sanitation.
Many analysts monitoring the clean water crisis in Bangladesh and the neighbouring region have referred to the growing emergency as a calamity with acute dimensions that requires urgent action. Very correctly their attention has been drawn to Dhaka’s groundwater drying up alarmingly. Experts in this context have blamed WASA’s impractical management. Some have pointed out that the old channel of the Buriganga is now like a mere canal in the Vakurta area, connecting the Dhaleshwari and the Turag and dividing the Savar and Keraniganj upazila. The media has pointed out that the effect of the WASA’s installation of a good number of deep tube wells in the area has led to the residents of Vakurta struggling to get water supply via their hand tubewells due to the fast-declining groundwater level. It has also emerged that to get any water from the ground, the residents have to install a powerful pump, which usually costs Tk 40,000 and is beyond the affordability of many in the area. It is also being alleged that WASA is taking water from the rural areas for the city dwellers.
