Dipankar Roy

Once a 4km long waterbody flowing through Khulna city, today the Bastuhara canal is headed towards virtual extinction, thanks to years of indiscriminate garbage dumping and illegal occupation.

The number of infections and deaths in Khulna division this month has broken all previous records.  

About 5.5 kilometres of Sonadanga-Mujgunni highway, one of the busiest roads in Khulna city, is increasingly becoming almost unusable for vehicular movement, as it has remained unrepaired for the last 10 years.

Large crowds were seen at different places in Khulna city, right after the lockdown was relaxed. Gatherings were especially visible at clothing, cattle and wholesale markets yesterday.

On the fourth day of the weeklong lockdown, droves of Khulna city residents gathered and crowded at kitchen markets, ignoring health guidelines amid an increasingly worsening situation.

Three days after testing positive for Covid-19, Abul Kashem Sheikh started having severe breathing difficulties on June 18.

With the Covid situation worsening further in Khulna division, the health directorate yesterday reported 82 deaths from the virus all over the country -- the highest in the past seven weeks.

Poritosh came to Khulna Medical College Hospital’s dedicated Covid-19 unit all the way from a Moheshkura of Bagerhat’s Morelgong upazila on

With the number of Covid-19 patients on the rise, the dedicated hospital for treating coronavirus in Khulna is struggling to cope with the pressure.

In many ways, Jamuna Mondal’s life has been shaped by river erosion and climate change.

Various labour organisations and industry experts have urged the government to allocate special funds in the upcoming national budget to help distressed jute mill workers and shrimp farmers survive the ongoing coronavirus pandemic.

Fish, shrimp enclosures and other structures in coastal areas surrounding the Sundarbans were damaged by tidal surges and storms due to the impact of cyclone Yaas, causing a loss of over Tk 5 crore.

For the last two months, every morning Helena Khatun, a resident of Moilapota area in Khulna city, wakes up hoping that she will be able to manage enough water for the day.

The Khulna region has not seen any rainfall in the last seven months.

Like other parts of the country, shops in the Khulna and Barishal divisions have become inundated with customers ahead of Eid-ul-Fitr, the biggest religious festival in Bangladesh.

Only about ten to twelve years ago, thousands of acres of land in Khulna would remain uncultivated after the harvesting of Aman rice, but growing of watermelon there did not cross the farmers’ minds.

People living by the Kirtonkhola river in Barishal noticed in March this year that the river’s water had become unusually salty.

The people of Khulna had not even considered watermelon farming just 10 or 12 years ago, when thousands of acres of land would remain uncultivated after the aman paddy season.

As the economic effects of the lockdown intensifies, lower to middle income people of Khulna keep finding it harder and harder to meet their grocery bills. In such a dire time, subsidised daily necessities courtesy of the Trading Corporation of Bangladesh (TCB) should be a saving grace. But its shortage in its stocks compared to the people’s needs.

“Very often I visit this museum to go back in time, looking at evidence of the Liberation War and reminiscing the days of freedom fighters,” said Bidhan Golder, a freedom fighter and native of Khulna’s Batiaghata upazila. “I had a good relationship with Madhab Chandra’s family. When I come here, I can feel his soul.”