Lakhs suffer as Tk 4.75 lakh project delayed

Crop lands in Hatipagar village covered with sand. PHOTO: STAR

Abdul Jabber of the same upazila in Sherpur district owns four acres of land but is a day labourer now.

There are scores like them in 25 villages in Nalithabari and in Fulpur and Haluaghat upazilas in Mymensingh, who are doing odd jobs just for survival, leaving agriculture.

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Many left homes for Dhaka and other cities to find any work.

They are among several lakh farmers in the three upazilas who can not cultivate their lands, now under four to eight feet sand.

Hell befell them when Bhogai river burst its bank at Hatipagar last year and left huge deposits of sand carried from Garo hills across the border.

"I can not imagine what will happen next monsoon because there is no initiative to repair the breach", lamented Amir Ali.

"More croplands will turn uncultivable and even my homestead may be washed away or covered by heaps of sand. My family may become homeless ", he said in tears.

This correspondent visited different areas of Nalithabari, Fulpur and Haluaghat. Nalitabari is the worst affected, where there are sheets of sand all around. Once fertile lands are now fallow.

Last year's flood also damaged kutcha and pucca roads, not yet repaired.

The worst affected villages in Nalitabari are Hatipagar, Nayabill, Nama Hatipagar, Andarupupara, Manupara, Duthkura, Chatkila, Nakugao, Sitpara and Gobinda Nagar.

Road links in the three upazilas have been badly damaged, even difficult for rickshaws to ply. Thousands of people suffer as part of the pucca road from Nalithabari to Nakugao was washed away by flood water gushing through the 500-feet breach in the Bhogai.

The worst is yet to come. Several lakh acres of fertile cropland will go under sand in the three upazilas if the breach is not repaired before the next monsoon, Yunus Ali, Chairman of Nayabil Union Parishad in Nalitabari told this correspondent on Saturday.

"More farmers will have to abandon lands. This will cause massive economic and social problems", he said.

"At least 1500 acres which produced IRRI-Boro earlier will remain fallow in Nayabil union alone this year", he said.

Mohammad Nasim Mia of Rupakura village in Nalithabari upazila said several thousand people went to local lawmaker Jahad Ali Chawdhury for immediate repair of the breached Bhogai embankment at Hatipagar to protect the areas from further devastation in the next monsoon.

"He (MP) replied that there is no fund to repair the embankment", Nasim Mia said.

This correspondent tried several times in the last four days to contact Jahad Ali Chawdhury MP. But he avoided talking on the issue.

Mohammad Jamaluddin, LGED (Local Government Engineering Department) Executive Engineer in Sherpur, when contacted said he submitted a Tk 4.74 lakh project to the authorities for repair of the embankment. There has been no progress in this regard, he said.

He admitted that several lakh acres of cropland will be affected in the three upazilas if the damaged embankment is not repaired.

Nalithabari Upazila Engineer Ashraful Haque also said more lands in the three upazilas will be covered by sand if the embankment is not repaired before the monsoon.