C T Online Desk: The Sylhet City Corporation has finally got released from the grip of water stagnation after a week on Tuesday while the low-lying areas in Sylhet district are still reeling from flooding, with at least half a million still stranded and hundreds unable to leave flood shelters.
While basic utility services such as electricity and water supplies were still inaccessible to about 1.5 lakh city dwellers, the Sylhet City Corporation authorities asked people to clean their own household premises citing unavailability of equipment and manpower.
The condition of people stranded in rural areas of Sylhet and Sunamganj districts seems dire as water stagnation will delay their cultivation of next crops for at least about a month, depending on the dry weather spell, which is very unlikely.
‘People started leaving flood shelters but 6,646 are still in 345 flood shelters in Sylhet and Sunamganj districts,’ Atiqul Huq, director general, Department of Disaster Management, told New Age.
He adds that none died during the flooding impacting 126 unions in 22 upazilas of the two districts.
The Directorate General of Health Services, however, said that nine people were killed during flood between May 12 and 22.
The district relief and rehabilitation office estimated that about 5 lakh people were still stranded in floodwaters, especially in low-lying areas near the bank of Kushiyara.
‘Water is still pouring into Zakiganj from the upstream,’ said AKM Faysal, upazila nirbahi officer, Zakiganj.
Water still dominated the landscape of five of the nine unions in the upazila, the UNO said, adding that many country roads were still submerged.
New Age’s staff correspondent in Sylhet reported that 1.5 lakh people in six wards adjacent to the suburban areas lived with many crises while electricity and water supply are still suspended since May 17, the day the city corporation went under water overnight.
The city authorities started supplying water to the areas around 3:00pm on Tuesday but it did not help much for there was no electricity to lift the water from underground reservoirs.
People are still paying much for drinking water.
‘I hired a generator for three hours for Tk 35,000 to lift water from my underground reservoir,’ said Abdul Khaleque, an apartment building owner in the area.
The quality of the piped water supplied was very poor, complained the city dwellers.
The Sylhet City Corporation’s executive engineer Ruhul Alam said that the supply of electricity was expected to be restored in no time.
According to Jahidul Islam, chief health officer of the city corporation, they began taking steps to stem the potential post-flooding growth of mosquito populations but did not have the capacity to clean residential household premises polluted by the floodwaters.
The office of the civil surgeon warned people about a potential outbreak of diarrhoea if the city was not properly cleaned and drinking water supply could not be ensured immediately.
The Department of Disaster Management on Tuesday said that the flooding affected 9,37,000 people in Sunamganj and Sylhet, a far low estimate of the flood-affected population which the UNICEF put at four million in five of the seven north-eastern districts.
The flooding was triggered by the heavy rain upstream across the border in India, particularly after the severe cyclonic storm Asani that dispersed massive clouds over the skies of north-east India and Bangladesh.
An extreme rain began on May 9 in parts of the catchments of the north-eastern and other areas in Bangladesh and then picked up gradually continuing until May 21.
So much water was dumped by the rain that it sent rivers such as the Surma and the Kushiyara flowing over their historic water level at five points in Sylhet and Sunamganj. Floodwater engulfed over 80 per cent of Sylhet district at the peak of flooding.
The Surma, the Kushiyara and the Someswari still flowed above their danger marks at four points in Sylhet and Netrokona, said Flood Forecasting and Warning Centre.
There was no rain in most of Bangladesh’s upstream areas such as Sikkim, West Bengal, Arunachal Pradesh, Assam and Meghalaya, Tripura, Mizoram and Manipur in the 24-hours until 9:00am Bangladesh time on Tuesday.
India Meteorological Department, however, reported rainfall activities in the Ganges basin upstream with a forecast of water level rise in the Padma through today (Wednesday).
The other rivers in the country would keep falling, the Flood Forecasting and Warning Centre said, adding that 57 out of the 109 river gauging stations reported fall in their water levels in the latest 24-hour reporting period.
A mild heat wave set in as soon as the dry weather spell began in the districts of Rajshahi, Khulna and Jashore with the highest daily maximum temperature of 36.6C recorded in Jashore, said the Met Office.
