Residents of Bandarban municipality have been without clean water for 10 days after the Department of Public Health Engineering (DPHE) cut off water supply citing technical glitch.
Water scarcity has affected the area’s businesses, particularly residential hotels where tourists stay. Many tourists are leaving the town.
Locals said an estimated 65,000 people were left without drinking water.
There is usually a shortage of about 500,000 gallons of water in the municipality as the DPHE supplies only 956,000 gallons against a daily demand of nearly 1.45 million gallons, DPHE sources said.
“We do not have water for meeting even the basic daily needs,” said one Md Sohel, resident of the town’s Banrupa area.
Most of the tube and ring wells set up by the government in recent years are out of order. People are being forced to use contaminated water from ponds. Many are buying bottled water from other places.
Bandarban DPHE Assistant Engineer Manjel Hossain said the water supply was cut as several motors had gone out of order. “We hope water supply will resume within a day or two,” he added.
