Ahmed Humayun Kabir Topu

Johurul Islam was in happy mood when he started harvesting paddy in April, but the early flooding of the year made the happy mood turn to darkness.

Family members of patients with mental illnesses seeking treatment at Pabna Mental Hospital are being harassed by brokers outside who demand money to get them an appointment with a doctor inside or lure them to privately run so-called mental health clinics.

When the country was coping with the soaring price of onion because of Indian export ban earlier this month, vegetables farmer Shahinur Rahman was seeing bumper production of a new variety of local onion he planted two months ago.

Lal Banu Begum and her family decided to come home after the floodwaters started to recede, but only to find their house, made of corrugated iron sheets, in utter despair.

Five months after Covid-19 cases first emerged in Pabna, the district health authorities say it is much better placed than other districts in terms of number of cases.

The flood has brought along destruction in its wake. But for Chalanbeel, the flood has brought along a semblance of destructive beauty.

A government move to transport cattle to Dhaka and other big cities by train ahead of Eid-ul-Azha has so far failed to draw any response from farmers and traders.

While Covid-19 cases continue to pile up in the districts as well as in cities, detection of Covid-19 has actually deteriorated in Pabna due to low testing since the first week of July.

More and more workers of different sub-contracting firms at Rooppur Nuclear Power Plant in Ishwardi upazila are getting infected with the novel coronavirus.

The coronavirus outbreak has hit hard the cattle farmers in Pabna and Sirajganj as they are now getting hardly any customer for the animals they prepared for the last year targeting the Eid-ul-Azha this year.

A government employee suffering from covid-19 was recently admitted to Pabna Medical College Hospital, which has a 100-bed Covid unit, but he was hurriedly shifted to Rajshahi Medical College Hospital because of acute respiratory problem.

“The coronavirus earlier closed our earning, and now flood has made us homeless,” said Mukti Khatun of Shuvogachha village in Sirajganj’s Kazipur upazila.

Around 25,000 families from five upazilas in Sirajganj are barely surviving on embankments or roads as their houses have been flooded.

Waterlogging disrupts crop cultivation on over a thousand acres of land in a shallow waterbody at Pashchimchak in between Ahmedpur and Raninagar unions in Pabna’s Sujanagar upazila.

A team of volunteers of Quantum Foundation take the responsibility of the last rites of the Covid-19 victims in Pabna, setting a unique example of dedication and courage during the pandemic.

Lychee growers in Pabna are all smiles as the fruit is fetching a good market price across the country after a shaky harvest.

When the government is planning to store sufficient food grains for ensuring support in the wake of the Covid-19 pandemic, the rice procurement drive in Pabna faces a hurdle due to alleged irregularities by a section of officials and ‘low prices’ offered to millers and farmers.

As the Covid-19 pandemic is wreaking havoc across the world, it has also induced countless rare incidents. Whilst the virus is trying to defeat humanity, people are fighting against it -- setting examples of solidarity. The volunteers of Quantum Foundation in Pabna have set such an example.

The Jamuna has been swelling rapidly over the last one week and has drowned low-laying areas in Sirajganj, threatening flash floods in the district.

Bodies of five more people who drowned in a boat accident in the Jamuna on Tuesday were recovered yesterday, taking the death toll to 10.