City Desk :
Water Resources Adviser Syeda Rizwana Hasan on Tuesday said the proposed master plan for the development of the Haors and other water bodies would be revised soon.
“We will see the reality and people’s participation in the master plan and it would be implemented in an environment friendly way,” she said this while inspecting an embankment at Umedpur area of Mortian Haor under Tahirpur upazila in the district.
Rizwana, also forest and climate change adviser, said, “We came here to see the damaged embankments which usually caused losses of different crops in the Haor areas.”
“New embankments will be constructed at the appropriate points for safeguarding the crops of the farmers,” she said. The adviser stressed the importance of timely work to protect crops
from flash floods. “We must be very vigilant so that we can cultivate our harvest before flash floods hit.”
The indiscriminate movement of houseboats, misuse of polythine and noise prolusion will be controlled smoothly, Syeda Rizwana said.
Home and Agriculture Adviser Lieutenant General Md Jahangir Alam Chowdhury, Agriculture Secretary Dr Md Emdad Ullah Miah, Water Resources Secretary Nazmul Ahsan, Deputy Commissioner Dr Md Elias Miah and Police Super AFM Anwar Hossain were also present during the visit.
Earlier, The wetland in haor areas dropped by almost 87 per cent between 1988 and 2020 in seven districts namely Sunamganj, Sylhet, Habiganj, Moulvibazar, Netrakona, Kishoreganj and Brahmanbaria, causing a sharp increase in flood severity in the north-eastern Bangladesh.
A study by the Bangladesh University of Engineering and Technology’s Department of Urban and Regional Planning in association with the Institute for Planning and Development on Friday revealed this information.
According to the study, carried out between March 2021 and May 2022, the wetland in the north-eastern haor region shrank to only 399.33 square kilometres in 2020 from 3,026.13 sq km in 1988.
BUET urban and regional planning department students Injamumul Haque Refat and Maria Mehrin conducted the study titled ‘Land Cover Change in Haros of Bangladesh’ as part of their undergraduate thesis under the supervision of the university’s DURP professor Mohammad Shakil Akther.
The study emphasised the importance of keeping haor land for uses like crop production, fish cultivation, biodiversity, tourism, storing carbon and groundwater replenishment.
Haors can play an important role in flood management by storing water from excessive rainfalls, over-flowing rivers and canals, the study added.
‘The increase in built-up area is an alarming sign for us. We are experiencing devastating floods in the north-eastern region.
The built-up area has seen a sharp increase at the expense of wetland, barren land, agriculture and forest,’ said Adil, adding that people should learn to live with flood due to the increase in rainfalls and change in climate.
