Editorial
Acute water shortage in the capital
Permanent as well as immediate measures needed
IT seems that the people living in the capital are destined to suffer from the lack of some essential basic facilities forever. Coupled with the severe shortage of electricity, life has become even more unbearable with lack of adequate water supply. Some specific areas of the city, particularly the old Dhaka area, are suffering more than others. And the members of parliament of the affected areas rightly fear that there might be, as a manifestation of the people's resentment, a general display of public anger against the government for its failure to ameliorate their sufferings.
Wasa as always is putting the blame squarely at the door of Desa. But for the load shedding, according to Wasa managing director, it would have been able to fully meet the city dwellers' need for water.
While power outage has a lot to do with water shortage, it is well known that Wasa's current capacity of providing potable water to the residents of the capital is considerably below the demand, and the actual demand is perhaps more than what is stated by Wasa, the entire shortfall is not totally duty to power cuts -- a good deal of it is the water supply authority's inadequate production capacity.
The ever-growing population of Dhaka is putting severe strain on the utility services. And there is a need to look at the long term and short-term solutions to the problem. We have an unparalleled quality of sitting on a problem before it turns into a crisis, and only then do we act. Thus the statement of the Wasa managing director that it might be four years before the problem is solved sounds rather distressing. Surely, he cannot be unaware of the fact that the crisis cannot wait that long.
While sinking newer pumps may appear a likely solution, the reality is that the water table is constantly going down, making subsurface extraction costlier. There must surely be other avenues open to us to exploit. In this regard there is merit in considering harvesting rainwater -- of which we have plenty during the monsoon.
But while it might take some time to put in place the long term solutions, Wasa must address the issue of wastage of water through leakage, clogged pipelines and idle water pumps at various locations due to lack of fuel as well as repairing of out of order pumps, with more urgency.
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