Dipankar Roy

The delay in the construction of a 3.5-kilometre-long Hatbati-Kasaribari-Soilmari road located at the Sadar union in Khulna’s Batiaghata upazila is causing immense suffering to thousands of commuters. The road construction work has remained suspended for six months, making it hard for locals to live in roadside houses and continue their businesses due to the sand and thick dust of brick chips in the air.

Although watermelon yields have been good this year, a section of farmers in Barishal and Khulna are facing heavy losses due to heavy hailstorms and poor market price amid the final stage of harvesting.

Khulna is facing a severe health hazard as around half of the clinics, hospitals, and diagnostic centres in the city do not have their own waste-disposal mechanism and dump unsorted garbage in street bins, said officials of Directorate General of Health Services and Khulna City Corporation (KCC).

Waking up before dawn, Dipali Mondal takes a three-km walk every day to collect drinking water from a pond for her five-member family in Channirchak village of Khulna’s Dakop upazila.

After winter ended, mosquitoes took control of Khulna, making life difficult for many city dwellers. Locals claim that the situation has been going on for a long time, with the authorities continuing to turn a blind eye.

Tomato farmers, particularly those in the southwest division of Khulna, are facing steep losses as prices for the fruit have come down drastically due to oversupply, as is the case around this time each year.

Shipyard Road, one of the busiest entrances to Khulna city, is becoming unusable for vehicular movement, as it has remained unrepaired for the last 10 years.

Karikapara canal, a 3-kilometre-long waterbody running through Khulna city, is on the verge of extinction due to mindless waste dumping and encroachment.

Thousands of farmers in the southwestern region of Bangladesh are benefitting from cultivating jujube as the fruit offers better profits within a shorter period of time compared to other crops.

Waiting hours in gridlocks and treading carefully on footpaths have become the norm for Khulna city dwellers due to the haphazard work to improve drainage, which is showing no sign of completion since it started in 2019.

Khadiza Begum, came to Khulna Medical College Hospital on December 30 from Satkhira’s Shyamnagar, with her six-year-old son Siam, who was suffering from high fever and shortness of breath.

Farmers in Khulna’s Batiaghata upazila are facing a crisis of sweet water for irrigating their agricultural land as most of the local canals have been grabbed by influential people.

For the last four years, Mujgunni Shishu Park in Khulna city has remained closed in the name of renovation. As a result, children are being deprived of a much needed recreational place.

Black tiger shrimps, locally known as Bagda, have seen their prices slump, handing losses to thousands of farmers in the southwestern region, the main belt of export-oriented shrimp and prawns in Bangladesh.  

Things that immediately come to mind when someone thinks of Khulna are the world’s one of the largest mangrove forests Sundarbans and delicious shrimps. But the southwestern city is also home to food dishes prepared with piper chaba, locally known as chui jhal, whose popularity is growing rapidly.

An industrial estate of the Bangladesh Small and Cottage Industries Corporation (BSCIC) in Khulna is yet to be fully developed even though more than half a century has passed since its establishment.

The once mighty Shoilmari river in Khulna’s Batiaghata upazila can now only be called a river on paper. In just three years, it has been filled with silt.

Md Alauddin Zoardar of Hasanpur village under Khulna’s Dumuria upazila has become a pioneer in fish farming by cultivating Pabdah catfish, locally known as Pabda, in a saline prone area of the region.

Broad bean farmers in Kharnia village under Dumuria upazila of Khulna expect good profit from cultivating early varieties of the crop this year, given that the weather remains favourable.

Due to continuous encroachment and unchecked pollution, Mayur, one of the main freshwater rivers of Khulna, is at death’s throes.