Poren Das comes from Dager Kuthi char (a raised part of sand or rocks in a river) nestled at Hatia of Ulipur upazilla in Kurigram, but travels extensively across the country to forage for food as he can hardly manage a work in his area.
He is a seasonal labourer; he stays in different parts of the country including Dinajpur, Panchagarh and Rangpur districts.
Like Poren, hundreds of rural people of Kurigram have to migrate to other parts of the country including the capital city and Chittagong to earn their livelihood as day labourers or rickshaw-pullers.
“Around 90% people of the char go to other districts as they don’t have adequate work in the area,” said Poren Das.
River erosion and flood each year render people unemployed as these natural disasters leave the entire area next to the rivers nearly barren for agriculture, the primary source of employment, government officials said.
“Most of the people living in the char and flood plains of Brahmaputra, Teesta and Dharla rivers have to go to other places for work as there is little employment opportunity,” said Abu ABM Azad, deputy commissioner of the district.
A total of 16 rivers including the country’s largest water tributary Brahmaputra (Jamuna) enter Bangladesh here and pass through the district.
Dr Ahsan Uddin Ahmed, executive director of Centre for Global Changes (CGC) who works on the ecosystem of the rivers, said in absence of male members of a family in the area specifically in the char, female members, especially adolescent girls, have to face serious social problems including physical harassment, forcing their parents to give them in early marriages.
There are at least 420 small and medium chars in the rivers. Of them, Brahmaputra alone has 150 chars, according to Char Livelihood Program (CLP), a project of the government to create employment opportunity in the area.
The DC office said about 150,000 people live in about 150 chars of Brahmaputra River. Of them, around 90% people frequently move to different locations in search of work.
Apart from lack of agricultural work, fishing too promises no prospect for the locals as the number of fish in those rivers are declining with the passage of time.
Mahiram Das, 50, a fisherman in his fourth generation living in Hatia Bhabesh under Ulipur upazila of the district, is now thinking of leaving his profession as he cannot get by on his meagre earning as the number of fish have severely depleted.
“Even ten years ago I could net fish worth Tk200 a day but now I have to depend on luck and sometimes I have to wait for three days at a stretch to catch a single fish in the Brahmaputra River,” he lamented.
Not only that, the number of fishermen too increased, thus shrinking employment opportunity in fishing profession, he observed.
His son Shamol Das, 30, has already left their family profession and now moves from one place to another as a seasonal labourer.
Excessive use of chemical substance like pesticide in agricultural sector and filling up of low land and flood plains are playing havoc on fish resources, said ecologist and environmentalist Ahsan Uddin Ahmed.
Freshwater fish usually breed and grow up in low land and flood plains during rainy season, he said.
The government has introduced Char Livelihood Program (CLP) to support char people but it has not yet made any remarkable changes in their lives, he noted.
The initiatives by CLP could not yield any positive result in the lives of locals as the CLP help rebuild damaged houses, and provides loan facilities, but it doesn’t have a plan to get those people out of the vicious cycle of unemployment leading to internal migration.
