River cleanup takes off in Bangladesh

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River cleanup takes off in Bangladesh

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07 January,2010 08:45 pm

Authorities in Bangladesh began the task of extracting hundreds of thousands of tonnes of garbage from two rivers which flow through the capital of Dhaka. A three-month pilot project was taken to clean the rivers Buriganga and Turag, once regarded as the lifelines of the Bangladeshi capital, at the expense of $3.6 million, said a junior minister. It has been estimated by the officials that the project will involve the removal of some 300,000 cubic metres of waste from the riverbeds. The water of the Buriganga and Turag are now so polluted that all the fish have died, and increasing waste has turned the water into a black gel. Even rowing across the rivera is now difficult as the smell is sometimes unbearable, environmentalists said. So this is a great day today because the government has taken up this cleaning program of this river, which really is dying, I mean absolutely dying. Its water is absolutely polluted, Its bed is full of polythene bags, there is an estimate there about fifteen feet layer of polythene bags accumulated on the bed of this river, said Morshed Khan, a local environmentalist.Bangladesh Inland Water Transport Authority (BIWTA) will implement the project financed by the ministry of environment. And today we have chosen to start the work of cleaning the rivers around Dhaka city. Around Dhaka city the rivers Buriganga and Turag. And this project is funded by the environment ministry by the fund Climate Change Trust Fund, said Bangladesh Environment Minister, Hasan Mahmud.The trust fund, which was approved in January 2009, was created to seek the causes of climate change and would adopt policies to protect people and property from its adverse effects.It was Initially allocated U.S.$ 43.5 Million. The plight of the Buriganga and Turag symbolises the general state of many rivers in Bangladesh, a large flat land criss-crossed by hundreds of rivers which faces an uphill battle to keep them navigable and their water safe for human and aquatic life. Bangladesh has about 230 small and large rivers, and a large chunk of the country's 140 million people depend on them for a living and for transportation. But experts say many of them are drying up or are choked because of pollution and encroachment. A World Bank study said four major rivers near Dhaka -- the Buriganga, Shitalakhya, Turag and Balu -- receive 1.5 million cubic metres of waste water every day from 7,000 industrial units in surrounding areas and another 0.5 million cubic metres from other sources. Unabated encroachment that prevents the free flow of water, dumping of medicinal waste and waste of river passengers have compounded the problem, making the water unusable for humans and livestock.