Dipankar Roy

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

Almost 400 tonnes of waste remain uncollected in Khulna City Corporation (KCC) streets and drains every day, causing health risk and environmental hazards for city’s 1.7 million dwellers.

As the dawn breaks, agricultural fields in Gadkhali, a remote village in the southwest district Jashore, unfold themselves with abundance of colours, calling upon nature lovers to come inside and feel the beauty of nature.

Right on the bank of the Kapotakkha stands a quintessential fishermen village named Hitampur. Poverty is quite rampant. As Manik Bandyopadhyay once wrote, “God does not come to Jelepara (fishermen’s neighbourhood)”, it is, indeed, an everyday battle.

The cost for an important road project in Khulna city is likely to see a hefty Tk 160 crore increase, after the project was delayed due to land acquisition issues.

For many in their 30s and above, the word newsprint occupies a good part of memories of their schooldays.

The mosquito problem of Khulna city is becoming more and more menacing by the day. Right after sunset, the insects start swarming the city’s ponds, bushes, water bodies, and drains. Soon enough they start thronging households too.

Rampant river-grabbing by influential persons mixed with reluctance on the authorities’ side to take steps against them, squeezed into a corner, the Bhairab river stands as a major waterbody being completely given to grabbing and pollution.

“Many are leaving this area and going someplace else to live. Their homes are submerged and they have no means of livelihood here. It is hard even to get drinking water sometimes.”

For 10 years, the MA Bari Link Road, adjacent to Sonadanga bus stand in Khulna city, has remained completely unnavigable.

After yesterday noon’s rainfall, two-thirds of Khulna city had to deal with severe waterlogging. The rain inundated the city and made residents suffer immensely.

It started around 70 days ago. Due to heavy rainfall, almost a third of Khulna city went underwater, including the low-lying Bastuhara colony area. But while the rest of the city has since recovered, the water is yet to drain out of Bastuhara.

Bangladesh’s  frozen shrimp processing industry is struggling to survive as factories  are closing down one after another due to a lack of raw materials,  competition with cheaper white-leg shrimp vannamei in the export markets  and inadequate government support, according to the Bangladesh Frozen  Foods Exporters Association (BFFEA).

After chasing his dream for over a decade, 46-year-old Aruni Sarkar, a  farmer from remote Gangarampur village of Khulna’s Batiaghata upazila,  finally succeeded in developing high-yielding and climate-adaptable  varieties of Aman paddy.

Vegetable farmers in Khulna are being unable to secure fair prices for their produce as the ongoing coronavirus crisis has disrupted the supply of these crops to different parts of the country, including Dhaka.

The number of death and positive cases of Covid-19 has been spiraling in Khulna division, turning the situation bad to worse.

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.