Over 18,000 km of river routes across Bangladesh have lost navigability because of continuous siltation since 1971, while another 2,200 km of river routes have become risky for plying vessels.

Local daily New Age reported on Saturday that the total length of river ways was 24,000 km in 1971, but it came down to 8,400 km and 5,200 km respectively during the rainy and dry seasons in 1984.

At present, the river ways shrank to 6,000 km and 3,800 km during the rainy and dry period.

Lack of dredging, reduction of stream flow, tidal volume, and cross-border flow, and siltation at off-takes (channels) are the main reasons for losing navigability of the rivers, experts said.

These are hampering smooth plying of inland water transports and vessels as well as irrigation facility and fish production, they said, adding that it will put an adverse impact on water transportation and water resources, if the government does not take necessary steps to navigate the rivers properly.

The chairman of the Bangladesh Inland Water Transport Authority, M. Reaz Hasan Khondaker, was quoted as saying that now they have the capacity of dredging of only 3 million cubic meters per year as against the demand of 9 million cubic meters.

Reaz said they are not in a position to dredge the rivers as per demand mainly due to shortage of dredgers and funds. "We get only 120 million taka (1.85 million US dollars) a year for maintenance and dredging as against the demand of 500 million taka (7.7 million dollars)."

"We think development means road construction, and many times we construct road filling up rivers, canals, and wetlands, but we never think about its harm," said Abdur Rahim, associate professor of the naval architect and marine engineering department at the Bangladesh University of Engineering and Technology.

"Government is stressing on dredging in some big river routes, but there are hundreds of rivers, canals, and wetlands which are ignored as it does not bring them into the policy formulation," Rahim said.

The government will have to assess the needs of dredging from grass-roots level to strengthen the national economy, he said. About 90 percent of sluice gates became blocked due to lack of dredging and maintenance, creating obstacles to proper use of the sluice gates and causing floods.

Rahim suggested identifying appropriate technology and its implementation for dredging, and demanded political commitment to change the scenario.

Source: Xinhua