'Turn to surface water for safety'

Though surface water is plentiful, it remains almost unused because of the mismanagement of the resource and the donors' prescription that encourages people to get water from deep tube-wells, speakers at a seminar observed yesterday.

Decades back only surface water was used in farming but today's agriculture is almost totally dependent on groundwater, which is very unfortunate and upsetting the environmental balance, observed the seminar on 'Water and Water Resources'.

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The seminar was organised by the Health and Environment Journalists' Forum, Bangladesh (HEJFB) in association with the Dhaka Community Hospital.

"Any plan regarding water resources should be carefully reviewed and linked to the development strategy. Local government should be involved in managing water resources," said social economist Hossain Zillur Rahman.

"Millions of people are now exposed to arsenic and other heavy mineral contamination. But the government still continues to install tube-wells even deeper which may invite another disaster," said Professor Quazi Quamruzzaman, chairman of the Dhaka Community Hospital, Trust.