Thousands bereft of safe drinking water

In 2014, eight remote shoals located twenty kilometres east of Bauphal upazila town in Patuakhali were formalised into Chandranip union that now has a population of 20,000 people. Of the 27 tube wells, eight are in a state of disrepair and basically non-operational, which means the population living on the shoals is forced to depend on Tentulia River for drinking water. Besides being extremely inconvenient, the water collected is purified with potassium alum, which does not necessarily make the water safe for human consumption. An investigative report by this paper on March 31 produced a grim picture for the people living in this frontier area.

Without access to safe drinking water, thousands of people suffer the ills that come with diarrhoea and dysentery. And those people who are situated even further away from the Tentulia River must resort to collecting water from the lone pond at a local's house, which loses its clarity and becomes murky during the dry season. The moment authorities decided to turn these shoals into an administrative unit, basic services like provisioning for access to safe drinking water should have been planned and made available, but that has not happened.

There is no pointin  talking about access to other basic rights like education and health where a fundamental requirement for existence is in question. Just because these people are physically located in a remote part of the country does not mean we can choose to ignore their plight. Indeed shoal-dwellers of other unions in the vicinity are facing similar drinking-water problems and we can only hope that the local administration will take steps to bring all the dysfunction tube wells on line as soon as possible.