IRIN
BANGLADESH: Cyclone survivors lack safe drinking water
21 November 2007


DHAKA, 21 November 2007 (IRIN) - Hundreds of thousands of survivors from 
last week's devastating cyclone in Bangladesh are reportedly now without 
access to safe drinking water.

Over 3,000 people are confirmed dead and millions more left homeless 
after the category four storm swept across the Bay of Bengal and struck 
the southwestern coast on 15 November, affecting 15 of the country's 64 
districts, 11 of them badly.

Abub Khan, a project manager for the non-governmental organisation (NGO) 
Forum, a Bangladeshi group working to ensure the basic needs of safe 
potable water in the country, said the NGO, along with the country's 
Dapartment of Public Health Engineering and military relief agencies, 
were working hard to clean up the water supply, as well as provide water 
purification tablets.

"Tube wells are being decontaminated with bleaching powder. In the 
coastal areas the raising of tube well platforms above tidal water 
levels has started," Khan told IRIN in Dhaka.

But the task of reaching so many people over such a large area is 
daunting.

Pond sand filters

Some rural villages were using pond sand filters (PSF), a unique system 
whereby ordinary pond water is pumped up and filtered through sand and 
coconut coir, rendering it safe for drinking, but many survivors 
continued to drink from the ponds directly.

"They are either too exhausted to travel to the PSFs or tube wells, or 
they do not know that the pond water may kill them," Mahtab Ali Akhand, 
a local school teacher in the village of Subidkhali in the worst 
affected district of Patuakhali in Barisal Division, not far from the 
sea, explained.

Meanwhile, residents of Char Lata, a river island of around 2,500 
inhabitants, reported that only 100-200 of them had actually received 
water purification tablets from the army's mobile medical team to date.

In Char Khali, another river island in Patuakhali and where upwards of 
300 people had died, all deep tube wells were now dysfunctional, with 
all but two shallow tube wells completely destroyed.

As of 20 November, over half of the area's 4,000 inhabitants had yet to 
receive any water purification tablets.

Access problems in remote areas

Indeed, it is in the remote, inaccessible parts of Bangladesh's worst 
cyclone-affected areas where the access problem was worse.

In Golachipa sub-district, survivors on the river islands of Char Lata, 
Char Agunmukha, Chalita Bunia, Char Anda, Char Bangla, Char Hair, and 
Char Mumtaz had no access to drinking water.

In neighbouring Dashmina sub-district, the river islands of Char Hadi, 
Char Borhan and Char Shahjalal faced similar circumstances, along with 
another two river islands in Baufal sub-district - Char Barret and Char 
Kardorma.

In the two severely affected sub-districts of Morrelganj and Sharonkhola 
in Bagherhat District, around a half a million people are now reportedly 
in need of clean drinking water.

"As a severe arsenic-prone area, people of Morrelganj and Sharonkhola 
have been dependant on pond and canal water for drinking and other daily 
use," Arifur Rahman, a health officer of the Dhaka-based international 
NGO BRAC, maintained.

Tidal surges

However, tidal surges accompanying the cyclone had flooded the canals 
and ponds with sea water, rendering them unfit for drinking, he said.

Added to that is the amount of debris that now fills many of the ponds, 
resulting in many of the fish dying - and making the water unfit for 
drinking purposes.

"The survivors are struggling to manage even a drop of safe drinking 
water for their surviving children," Atiur Rahman Talukder, an imam at a 
local mosque at Tengratila in Morrelganj, maintained. "They no longer 
have access to pots or fires to boil the water they drink."

Efforts by military and non-governmental organisations to supply water 
purification tablets and bottled water were continuing, but it appears 
that demand is much higher than earlier believed.


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