Mintu Deshwara

Irregularities have been found in government cash assistance lists for tea workers in Moulvibazar, with fake NID numbers used multiple times.

It is quite a sight finding green grapes hanging from vines, a scene often attributed to the Mediterranean regions. However, this may also become common in Bangladesh soon. Surprised?

With cow milk sales plummeting in the past several months amid consumers’ fear of contracting the Covid-19 virus, a considerable number people, whose livelihoods depend entirely on milk sales, are living in constant fear of losing their milk-yielding cows to the deadly cattle LSD virus.

Within a year of birth, children are vaccinated for various diseases as a preventive measure. But Expanded Programme on Immunisation (EPI) is being disrupted here this time due to coronavirus outbreak. Children and pregnant women are not going to the EPI centres to avoid Covid-19 transmission.

A number of people, who do not lead prayers at mosques, have been named in the lists for the government’s cash assistance to imams in Sylhet’s Kulaura during the Covid-19 pandemic.

While the administration is busy enforcing various directives of the government to contain the spread of Covid-19 pandemic, destruction of a hillock is going unnoticed in Juri upazila of Moulvibazar.

Sumita Kairi, a tea labourer at Daluchhara Tea Garden in Fenchuganj Upazila of Sylhet, gave birth at home. No trained midwife was present during the delivery of her first child. Sumita’s child was born with the assistance of two local elderly women.

After her mother passed away, her father remarried and moved elsewhere, and so attending school became a luxury for 12-year-old Sheuly Munda.

Delay in government procurement is forcing desperate farmers to sell their paddy at lower prices to rice mill owners and hoarders in Sylhet region.

The government recently declared 70 percent subsidy for farmers of the haor region, up from the previous 50 percent, for the purchase of agriculture machinery.

Everything has come to a halt due to the countrywide shutdown to flatten the spread of highly contagious Covid-19.

As many as 536 permanent workers of Kaliti tea garden in Moulvibazar’s Kulaura upazila are passing days amid utter hardship as they have not been paid for the last 13 weeks.

Amid the coronavirus scare and threat of impending flash flood, farmers in the haor region of Sylhet Division are expecting a bumper Boro harvest this time.

Once unproductive and full of water hyacinth, a five-decimal pond at Moulvibazar’s Nuna village has become the centre of attention in the region, as a youth successfully farmed pearls in the waterbody.

Inclement weather. Lack of buyers. Shortage of workers. And impending flashfloods. These very real developments, coupled with a belief that prices of their harvest are set to fall, have Boro farmers in Sylhet’s haor region looking down the barrel. The government-declared stimulus package and assurances of buying up a huge amount of paddy and rice, which are meant to help, also ring hollow to many farmers.

Bidyanondo Foundation, a non-profit social welfare organisation, distributed food among 500 tea workers’ families in Chunarughat upazila of Habiganj, who had been languishing since authorities shut down the tea garden following a clash with them on March 5.

People of twenty villages near the five-kilometre road cum embankment from Sherpur to Naluar Haor in Jagannathpur upazila of Sunamganj have continued voluntary work to reconstruct the road to protect their croplands and houses and roads,

About five lakh people living and working in 163 tea gardens in the country seem vulnerable during the ongoing spread of coronavirus as they often come in close contacts.

More than 1000 tea workers’ families have been living a miserable life since the authorities shut Rema tea garden in Habiganj’s Chunarughat upazila following a clash with tea workers on March 5.

Thirteen-year-old orphan Supra Bawri’s lives with her grandparents on the Jagchara tea estate in Sreemangal upazila of Moulvibazar.