3,400 families lose homes in 3 months
Unabated erosions by 12 rivers, including the Brahmaputra, Teesta and
Dharla, have taken a turn for the worse, leaving some 3,400 families
of over 100 villages in five upazilas of the district homeless over
the last three months.According to local Department of Relief and Rehabilitation sources,
the situation has taken a devastating turn at least at 20 points of
the rivers, eroding away hundreds of acres of croplands, educational
institutions, historical places, sluice gates, flood control
embankments and different establishments.
The erosion-hit families, meanwhile, have taken shelter on
embankments, roads and their relatives’ houses only to live an inhuman
life for lack of emergency supplies.
Officials at the district Water Development Board (WDB) said Rajibpur
upazila headquarters now stands threatened as the mighty Brahmaputra
is getting close to it.
Many establishments and parts of two cross-bars in Chilmari upazila
and a one-km part of the flood prevention embankment at Jatrapur union
in Sadar upazila have already disappeared into the gorge of the
Brahmaputra River, the officials said.
WDB executive engineer (Kurigram south unit) M Abu Taher said there
are 16 erosion-hit points under his jurisdiction and they were dumping
sand bags only at Kalirkura point to check the river bank erosion.
He said they did not get the approval of the authorities concerned to
start working to stop erosion at 15 other points.
M Enayetullah, WDB (Kurigram north unit) executive engineer, said they
could not prevent erosion by dumping sand bags at Baldipara points out
of four erosion-hit points that fall under his jurisdiction.
Deputy Commissioner (DC) ABM Azad said 118 bundles of corrugated iron
sheets and cash Tk 3.54 lakh were distributed among 59 erosion-hit
families.
He said some of the families were also provided with 10 kilogrammes of
rice each, adding that they will also distribute 40 metric tones of
rice and Tk five lakh among the erosion-struck people. -UNB, Kurigram
