A river re-excavation project in Dinajpur that was supposed to provide better irrigation facilities among other benefits has done little to make the lives of locals better.
Between January 2013 and June 2014, the Water Development Board (WDB) implemented the Tk123.84 crore project of re-excavating and constructing regulators on the Kharkharia River in Dinajpur’s Parbatipur upazila and creating a protection embankment on the Dhepa River in Kaharol upazila. Bangladesh Climate Change Trust Fund financed the project, aiming to provide multiple benefits to over 10,000 people.
But locals in Parbatipur say the excavation project has only done damage to the area.
“Instead of benefiting us, the project has only harmed us. They [project officials] have dumped the [excavated] soil in cultivable land in the area,” said a farmer named Faruk Sarkar from Benirhat village near the river Kharkharia.
Blaming the WDB for doing the job poorly, he said much of the damage has been done because the authorities concerned did not even ask the opinion of locals before carrying out the project.
Faruk, who owns 20 bighas of arable land beside the river, said he has to use water from deep tube-wells for irrigation. “The river has very little water, nobody can use it for irrigation,” he said.
Md Sahir, a landless farmer who lives near the river, said he did not even have any idea about the river excavation work.
Other locals alleged that the WDB had failed to compensate many people whose land was acquired during the construction of a sluice gate on the river.
However, Anwar Hossain, WDB sub-divisional engineer (Dinajpur) and the then in-charge of the project, denied such claims, saying only a couple of farmers had suffered damage to their crops because of the project.
He added there were no provisions for compensation under this project, while any sort of attempt at compensating victims would have only delayed the project’s progress.
An official at WDB’s Dinajpur office, requesting anonymity, told the Dhaka Tribune that they had a tight budget of Tk70 crore for re-excavating the river as the rest of the money went to the Dhepa river protection dam.
Another allegation that locals repeatedly raised while talking to the Dhaka Tribune was that project officials had overall done a shoddy job.
During a recent visit to the area, the Dhaka Tribune found that two of the five regulators in the sluice gates of Kharkharia were not working, while another had broken down. The remaining two also could not be closed once opened. To make matters worse, there was no sluice gate operator hired by the WDB to manage the water flow.
All of it, however, did not matter during monsoon as leaks in the sluice gates allowed river water to easily pass and flood the arable lands.
Locals also said the contractor, who they claimed was hired because of his political allegiance, had excavated to only two or three feet of depth, even though the excavation should have been at least five to six feet deep.
Pointing to several waterholes in the middle of the dry riverbed, locals told the Dhaka Tribune that the contractor had dug those in exchange of money from people who wanted to use the waterholes for fishing during the dry season.
Seeing overwhelming irregularities by the contractor, the angered locals had also engaged in clashes with project officials. The violence injured a driver of a dragger machine and left a motorcycle belonging to the WDB vandalised.
When asked about the irregularities and ineffectiveness about the project, WDB’s Anwar Hossain said the re-excavation work now helps irrigate about 15,000 hectares of arable land.
Because of the project, no land now remains uncultivated, Anwar said. “The project has increased employment opportunities for the landless farmers,” he added.