A nationwide government-run survey has found that people living in Sylhet division have long been severely affected by floods, making them nearly nine times more vulnerable than the rest of the country.
Floods during the 2019-2023 period in Bangladesh rendered 1.7% of the country’s population displaced from their homesteads, but in the last five years the flood-induced displacement rate was over 15% in Sylhet division – almost nine times more than the national average.
The Bangladesh Bureau of Statistics (BBS) recently released its report on the Socioeconomic and Demographic Survey 2023, one of the country’s biggest surveys ever, conducted in May-June last year in over a quarter of a million households across Bangladesh.
It found out the distressed condition of people living in Sylhet division, a sizeable number of whom have to leave their homesteads during floods each year and take refuge in temporary shelters, camps, tents, others’ residences, etc within and even outside their districts in the division.
The survey report says it is evident that during floods people in Sylhet division have to live somewhere other than their own households, in a much greater number compared to their counterparts in the seven other divisions of the country.
Dr Shahnaz Arefin, secretary of the Statistics and Informatics Division of the Planning Ministry, said she expected these findings to guide future planning in Bangladesh.
After one of the worst floods in 2022, a substantial part of Sylhet once again went underwater during flash floods this June.
In a June 20 report, the European Commission's Directorate-General for European Civil Protection and Humanitarian Aid Operations (ECHO) said: “Nearly 30,000 people moved to shelter centres while many families were seen wandering in northeastern Bangladesh. Only in Sylhet district, almost 75% of areas, including 23 wards of the city and 1,548 villages in 13 Upazilas, have been flooded, directly affecting over 825,000 people. In Sunamganj district, flooding affected 560,000 people.”
In a follow-up report on June 21, ECHO stated: “Continuous heavy rainfall inside the country over the past three days and onrushing water from upstream have flooded the northeast haor region of Bangladesh. Sylhet and Sunamganj districts have experienced 242mm and 223mm of rainfall, respectively, already exceeding the monthly average.
“Almost 75% of Sylhet district is now flooded, with more than half of the crops and paddy fields in the region submerged under water, likely to have lasting impacts on people’s food security.”
According to the Sylhet district administration, 957,448 people were trapped in floodwaters and 21,786 people were staying in shelters as of June 19.
Not much done to save Sylhet’s flood-hit people
For years, rivers in northeastern Bangladesh, at the recipient end of upstream heavy flows from across the border, have accumulated silts with their river beds gradually silted up, reducing their capacities to hold and discharge monsoon onrush and heavy rainfalls.
Continuous elevation of riverbeds both in the Surma and Kushiyara rivers and their source river Barak in India has reduced their water-holding capacities, overflowing and flooding hundreds of villages in the catchment during floods.
On top of it, some experts also assign unscientific infrastructure development in the greater haor zone as a reason behind flood agony in Sylhet division.
Every time Sylhet experiences higher magnitude deluges, ministers promise river dredging to mitigate the crises faced by the people living in the region. But things do not move much.
At the height of the 2022 floods, then-foreign minister Dr AK Abdul Momen, whose Sylhet residence was also underwater, visited the district and said the Surma and Kushiara rivers in Sylhet would be dredged to restore their navigability and prevent floods. During his May 2022 Sylhet visit, Momen said: “The bed of the two main rivers of Sylhet – Surma and Kushiyara – has been filled. We have plans to dredge the river before the next monsoon.”
After over two years, following another severe flooding in Sylhet, State Minister for Water Resources Zaheed Farooque said on June 20 that the government would take steps to dredge the Surma River to protect Sylhet city from early floods.
Water from upstream brought silt that obstructed the river's normal flow, said the minister. "We have talked to the engineers to start the dredging of the Surma River soon," he said.
But in reality, the dredging project for Sylhet's two main rivers has long been stuck in files. Though there was a plan to dredge the rivers to a depth of 4.3 metres and a width of 90 metres, the Surma-Kushiyara Capital Dredging Project has not entered the implementation phase even after four years.
According to the Bangladesh Inland Water Transport Authority (BIWTA), the five-year project aims to dredge 18 rivers in the region including the Surma and Kushiyara simultaneously with an estimated total cost of Tk1,675 crore. But it is still lying with the Finance Ministry for approval.
BIWTA officials say once it is cleared by finance and then the planning ministry, the project will be presented to and hopefully passed by the Executive Committee of the National Economic Council (Ecnec).
Despite initial enthusiasm for dredging following the floods of 2022, the people of Sylhet are disappointed that the project has not yet started, and the severity of this year’s floods is attributed to the failure to carry out dredging on time.